Abandonment fears of persons with Alzheimer's disease attending adult day care

Abstract

By using participant observation and staff interviews, we examined the phenomenon of abandonment fears in persons with Alzheimer's disease who were frequent attendees of an adult day care center. Two women, who most frequently expressed fears of abandonment, were the primary participants of the study. Their fears stemmed from two sources: contextual confusion, centered on their inability to grasp the concept of attending an adult day care center, and imagined barriers between them and their caregivers. One of the women tended to "recruit" the other woman into her world of insecurity, and hence their friendship actually may have had a detrimental effect on each other's days at the center. Staff members discussed the issue with reluctance and indicated that methods to attempt to change the behavior would be futile.