Psychosocial Interventions to Address the Emotional Needs of Caregivers of Individuals with Alzheimer’s Disease

Abstract

(from the chapter) Providing care for ourselves and our family, as well as our community and the world around us, is a ubiquitous part of life. The act of caring creates a field of human endeavor in which the potential emerges for both confluence and conflict between different values. This chapter specifically concerns individuals affected by AD and their caregivers. However, the concept of AD may be examined in the broader context of age-related cognitive impairment. The term AD has become salient in the lives of individuals as well as societies and carries with it a terrorizing connotation. Yet, cognitive impairment at the end of life has been with human beings since early in the development of our species, certainly since the time of recorded history. There have been many diverse social responses to what we now call dementia and mild forms of memory impairment. In most cultures around the world, cognitive changes are viewed as a normal part of aging. The politics in Western countries, which are dominated by scientific models and scientism, have been framed in one particular way: AD is not normal aging; it is a disease. This chapter will focus on care provisions for human beings whom society has labeled as having Alzheimer's disease (AD) by examining the ethical issues that emerge in caregiving practice, research, and education. We will begin our deliberations by asking what options we have for both the theoretical framework and methods of ethical considerations in caregiving. After considering the different perspectives from which care values can be viewed, we will then turn to the issue of labeling people and the power of language. Further, by considering the ethical issues and "disease" conditions for which we are providing care, we will consider the terminal life course of someone diagnosed with AD and the implications of this course for caregiving. Following a temporal sequence, we will examine ethical issues associated with risk assessment prior to diagnosis, particularly genetics, and conclude with some thoughts about the impact of these on caregivers. Caregiving considerations to enhance the quality of death will be noted. The final section will take a look at the future of caregiving to predict some of the ethical issues that will emerge in the years to come. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2013 APA, all rights reserved)