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People with dementia and migrant backgrounds often receive suboptimal care. Language problems, feelings of shame, and differences in values and preferences can complicate communication between people with dementia, their informal caregivers, and professional caregivers. Good mutual understanding is essential for shared decision-making in care. Therefore, it is important to gain insight into how people with dementia and their loved ones give meaning to dementia in their everyday speech and thinking.
In our everyday language, we often speak of dementia with powerful imagery: think, for example, of "getting lost in the fog" or "getting lost in your brain." These metaphors give direction to our thinking: they create images that convey meanings. The ZonMw-funded research "Dementia and metaphors" investigated with which metaphors people with dementia and their caregivers from six different cultural groups think and speak about dementia.
Would you like to know what this revealed? Read the recent publication in Social Science & Medicine - Qualitative Research in Health: A.J.M. Oerlemans, A.G. Dorst, M.L. Knippenberg, G.J. Olthuis, Dementia in metaphors: A qualitative study among informal caregivers of people with dementia from migrant and ethnic minority groups, DOI: 10.1016/j.ssmqr.2023.100266