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To conduct an exploratory mixed-methods study of attitudes toward extramarital relationships in the context of spousal Alzheimer’s disease.

We present descriptive analyses of quantitative data from the National Social, Health, and Aging Project and of qualitative comments posted online by readers of newspaper articles that focus on extramarital relationships in the context of caring for a spouse with Alzheimer’s disease.

Analyses of the quantitative data indicate the Alzheimer’s caregivers report more negative attitudes toward extramarital sex in the context of spousal Alzheimer’s disease. However, this difference is driven by non-spousal caregivers’ attitudes; spousal caregivers have substantially less negative attitudes. Analyses of public comments suggest that those who are most negative are focused on traditional religious and family values. Those who express less negative attitudes espouse a compassionate pragmatism that makes allowances for caregiver needs in the context of managing the difficulties of the spouse-caregiver role.

Quantitative data are limited by the small number of Alzheimer’s caregivers; qualitative analyses are based on a convenience sample of online comments.

Findings can inform future research, educational initiatives for professionals, the media, and people living with Alzheimer’s disease and their family members.

The number of individuals living with Alzheimer’s disease and spousal caregivers will increase as the Baby Boomer generation ages. Norms regarding extramarital relationships in the context of caring for a spouse with Alzheimer’s disease are evolving.

Little social scientific research examines attitudes toward extramarital relationships in the context of spousal Alzheimer’s disease.

The importance of libraries as centers for the distribution of material dealing with the concerns of the elderly was highlighted recently in an open letter to state library associations from Bessie B. Moore, vice‐chairperson of the National Commission of Libraries and Information Science (NCLIS). She wrote:

Adults with Down's Syndrome are at risk of developing Alzheimer's disease in later life. This paper gives an overview of the current research in the area and discusses the implications it raises for individuals, carers and service providers. Information on the link between Down's Syndrome and Alzheimer's disease and prevalence rates are given. The clinical symptoms of Alzheimer's disease and a stage model documenting the progression of the disease are presented. Attention is drawn to the problems inherent in assessing and diagnosing Alzheimer's disease in a person with a pre‐existing learning disability. The importance of a thorough assessment procedure and guidelines for assessment methods are highlighted. The paper also discusses the management of Alzheimer's disease and focuses on care management practices and recommendations for service provision. Guidelines for supporting individuals include maintaining skills, adopting a person‐centred approach, implementing psychosocial interventions and multidisciplinary care management. Finally, high prevalence rates of Alzheimer's disease in adults with Down's Syndrome and increasing life spans are highlighted as a particular concern, and recommendations for the future include increasing education and awareness, implementing screening services, improving assessment methods and developing appropriate services.

Purpose – To explore how home care social worker perceptions of their organizations' dominant goals and means affect direct service home care professionals' care delivery and meeting of patient needs for persons with Alzheimer's disease.

Methodology/approach – The study used a convenience sample of 34 home care social workers in the New York City metropolitan area and an extensive literature review.

Findings – The study found that literature indicates a dissonance between effective, evidence-based research psychosocial Alzheimer's disease interventions and Medicare home health policy which does not cover their use. Furthermore, interviews indicated home care social workers' different strategies to cope with organization demands, which affect their perceptions and care delivered to patients. The coping strategies are characterized using a modified version of Merton's (1957) adaptation model – conformist, innovator, and rebel.

Contribution to the field – The study is the first to use the voice of home care social workers to explore how perceptions of organizational dominant goals and means affect direct service home care professionals' care delivery and meeting of patient needs. The study asserts the need for a home care-based policy model drawing on the Hospice Medicare Benefit (HMB) to address Alzheimer's disease more cost-effectively with a more positive quality of life manner, thus limiting the adverse consequences of the evolving epidemic.

Preferences of both Alzheimer patients and their spouse caregivers are related to a willingness-to-pay (WTP) measure which is used to test for the presence of mutual (rather than conventional unilateral) altruism.

Contingent valuation experiments were conducted in 2000–2002, involving 126 Alzheimer patients and their caregiving spouses living in the Zurich metropolitan area (Switzerland). WTP values for three hypothetical treatments of the demented patient were elicited. The treatment Stabilization prevents the worsening of the disease, bringing dementia to a standstill. Cure restores patient health to its original level. In No burden, dementia takes its normal course while caregiver’s burden is reduced to its level before the disease.

The three different types of therapies are reflected in different WTP values of both caregivers and patients, suggesting that moderate levels of Alzheimer’s disease still permit clear expression of preference. According to the WTP values found, patients do not rank Cure higher than No burden, implying that their preferences are entirely altruistic. Caregiving spouses rank Cure before Burden, reflecting less than perfect altruism which accounts for some 40 percent of their total WTP. Still, this constitutes evidence of mutual altruism.

The evidence suggests that WTP values reflect individuals’ preferences even in Alzheimer patients. The estimates suggest that an economically successful treatment should provide relief to caregivers, with its curative benefits being of secondary importance.

Music stimulation is considered beneficial for people with advanced Alzheimer’s disease. The purpose of this paper is to assess a tablet-based program to promote music-related hand responses and positive engagement (e.g. singing or moving the body with the music) in people with advanced Alzheimer’s disease.

The program was implemented with 20 participants according to a non-concurrent multiple baseline design across participants. The participants were provided with a tablet whose screen worked as a sensor. During the intervention, sensor activations by hand responses led the tablet to present 10 s segments of preferred songs; an absence of sensor activation led the tablet to produce a prompt.

The participants’ mean frequencies of hand responses (i.e. sensor activations) per 5 min session increased from mostly zero during baseline to between about 9 and 20 during the intervention. The mean percentages of observation intervals with participants’ positive engagement increased from 0 to 12 during the baseline to between 13 and 55 during the intervention. The differences between baseline and intervention data were statistically significant for all participants.

A tablet-based program, such as that used in this study, may help people with advanced Alzheimer’s disease develop specific music-related responses and positive engagement.

This paper aims to describe and understand the family experience of caregiving to their Alzheimer patients and to explore the impact of caregiving on the family’s caregiver well-being.

The study involved eight family caregivers from the outpatient department, specifically from the neurology-medical clinic. A descriptive phenomenological approach was used for data collection through in-depth semi-structured interviews.

Four themes emerged: caregiver perception, tension, the sense of duty and commitment and altruism and sacrifice. The experience of family caregivers was different from their experiences with other chronic illnesses.

The family caregivers experience new life when providing care to their patients with Alzheimer's. The impact of the process of caregiving on whole life appeared in both positive and negative aspects. The perception and awareness of family caregivers toward Alzheimer’s disease were poor.

Using the internet parallel to or after television (TV) consumption changes the way people receive news. The way information is framed by the media has been found to influence the behavior of news recipients. The purpose of this paper is to hypothesize that the exposure to TV media frames would affect a lay audience’s online information-seeking behavior.

In an experiment combining eye tracking and content analysis, participants (n=72) were exposed to one of three TV clips with different media frames (based on a full-sample content analysis) that focused on Alzheimer’s disease. After exposure, participants informed themselves about the issue online. Eye tracking allows to investigate whether individuals mainly scan information, or whether they compute information on a higher level of attention (use more thorough deliberate comparison of information and really reading information).

Three different frames of online content were identified. Framing was found to influence the individual online searching and reading of information on a descriptive level (entering search words and viewing website content) to some degree, but not on a procedural level (such as selecting online search results).

This study makes a significant contribution to the literature embedding an established theoretical process like framing effects into the internet literature. Regarding the broader theoretical context, this study shed some light on cross-media framing effects on online behavior. Applying the psychological perspective of framing theory to explain and predict online searching behavior is beneficial for specific types of online search behavior. Main limitations are the not representative student sample and the forced task that participants had to inform themselves about Alzheimer’s disease online.

The results have practical implications for the creation of TV-related websites. There can be a positive, profitable synergy of TV and online websites. The websites can complement the TV programs with the focus on information needs of the recipients depending on the TV activated audience frames. Therefore, media managers would do well to plan the contents of their websites as internet-based resources that meet the activated information needs.

This study is among the first to investigate the framing effects of TV on the online information searching behavior of individuals. A deeper understanding of how media frames, especially from TV, are affecting online information seeking will allow researchers to better explain and predict online user behavior and information needs. But still, more research is needed.