Anticipated grief in relatives of people with alzheimer’s disease: Discourse analysis

Abstract

Alzheimer’s disease (ad) is the most common demen-tia; it is considered a chronic and incurable process. Caregivers of people with ad may experience anticipatory grief. The aim was to observe the development of anticipatory grief in family caregivers of people with ad. Ten family caregivers of people with moderate or advanced ad (70 % women), aged between 18 and 80 years, participated. They answered a semi-structured interview (feelings, recognition of death, family re-organisation, hope, facilitation or resistance to death and approaching or distancing from the relative). The technique of qualitative content analysis was em-ployed using the triangulation of two researchers. In addition, a descriptive analysis was carried out with spss v.26. The results suggest that relatives of people with ad go through a process of anticipatory grief: they show surprise, anger and fear; the majority (90 %) recognised that their relative was at the end of life; all engaged in family restructurings to adapt to the new situation; 30% were hopeful that their relative’s health would improve, while 70% would facilitate the dying process. In addition, most of them became closer to their relative (80 %) and half of them (50 %) changed their attitude towards death in a positive way. Greater difficulties were identified in: women, main caregivers living with ad and those with a basic level of education. Knowing the risk and protective factors in anticipatory bereavement can help to detect people at risk and to intervene psychologically by strengthening the protective factors.