Jane Youell

PhD Student

Living with dementia: relational coping strategies and resilience

Jane.youell@northampton.ac.uk

PhD Summary

• How do people living with dementia, their carers and their key workers, experience and understand the changes in intimacy that accompany living with dementia

• Qualitative study

• 33 participants

• Carers, people with a diagnosis and key workers

Resilience

•Predictors of caregiver burden in caregivers of individuals with dementia

•Dementia and loneliness: an Australian perspective

•Psychiatric complications of dementia

•Depressive disorders in dementia

•Sexual relationships in married dementia sufferers

Resilience -

1. the power or ability to return to the original form, position, etc., after being bent, compressed, or stretched; elasticity.

2. ability to recover readily from illness, depression, adversity, or the like; buoyancy.

Practical ResilienceOh yes, funny enough we do go out to Morrison’s. I do have a system where I go around about 5 o’clock and do a shop with Rita then have a meal. She has a chicken tikka masala and I have a fish and chips or ….and it suits us well because the meals aren’t very big so I suppose in a way we are still going out to a restaurant although it’s a bit limited. But there you are (Reg)

Emotional Resilience

It was, fortunately it had been changed that week and as I say he never, ever wet the bed and I can’t change his bed and I go [getting teary] in every night and lay in it and talk to him (Betty)

Practical ResilienceI don’t know if you mentioned to you when you asked me but I did a bit of interviewing for the ….oh God, well it’s for the Government really you know the body that gets figures for erm, erm, you know you see it on television they quote so many people do this or that and erm, I was an interviewer for them (Cora)

Emotional ResilienceThat’s true, and I think since my diagnosis again it might be the time factor that’s in my head I don’t know, but I will just go up to him and hug and kiss him for no apparent reason, now I wouldn’t do that before and I just think well, you just don’t know…. if the feeling comes over you just do it, so we’re fine, we’re good (Cora)

Practical resilienceBut I’m lucky because she’s still eating,

that’s why I go up at dinner time, I mean no disrespect to the girls there, they’ve got a job to do and they have a tendency to say oh you don’t want your dinner, take it away, whereas if you sit and persevere, it may be cold, but at least you get some food down

her, you know.(Ray)

Emotional resilience

I mean sometimes you go there and she’ll just go, go to sleep, but she’s always

rubbing your hand, you know, so she knows I’m there (Ray)