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‘The living death of Alzheimer's’ versus ‘Take a walk to keep dementia at bay’: representations of dementia in print media and carer discourse

Understanding dementia is a pressing social challenge. This article draws on the ‘Dementia talking: care conversation and communication’ project which aims to understand how talk about, and to people living with dementia is constructed. In this article I draw on the construction of dementia manifest...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autor principal: Peel, Elizabeth
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Blackwell Publishing Ltd 2014
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4145707/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24935028
http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/1467-9566.12122
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author Peel, Elizabeth
author_facet Peel, Elizabeth
author_sort Peel, Elizabeth
collection PubMed
description Understanding dementia is a pressing social challenge. This article draws on the ‘Dementia talking: care conversation and communication’ project which aims to understand how talk about, and to people living with dementia is constructed. In this article I draw on the construction of dementia manifest in two data sets – a corpus of 350 recent UK national newspaper articles and qualitative data derived from in-depth interviews with informal carers. These data were analysed using a thematic discursive approach. A ‘panic-blame’ framework was evident in much of the print media coverage. Dementia was represented in catastrophic terms as a ‘tsunami’ and ‘worse than death’, juxtaposed with coverage of individualistic behavioural change and lifestyle recommendations to ‘stave off’ the condition. Contrary to this media discourse, in carers' talk there was scant use of hyperbolic metaphor or reference to individual responsibility for dementia, and any corresponding blame and accountability. I argue that the presence of individualistic dementia ‘preventative’ behaviour in media discourse is problematic, especially in comparison to other more ‘controllable’ and treatable chronic conditions. Engagement with, and critique of, the nascent panic-blame cultural context may be fruitful in enhancing positive social change for people diagnosed with dementia and their carers.
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spelling pubmed-41457072014-08-28 ‘The living death of Alzheimer's’ versus ‘Take a walk to keep dementia at bay’: representations of dementia in print media and carer discourse Peel, Elizabeth Sociol Health Illn Original Articles Understanding dementia is a pressing social challenge. This article draws on the ‘Dementia talking: care conversation and communication’ project which aims to understand how talk about, and to people living with dementia is constructed. In this article I draw on the construction of dementia manifest in two data sets – a corpus of 350 recent UK national newspaper articles and qualitative data derived from in-depth interviews with informal carers. These data were analysed using a thematic discursive approach. A ‘panic-blame’ framework was evident in much of the print media coverage. Dementia was represented in catastrophic terms as a ‘tsunami’ and ‘worse than death’, juxtaposed with coverage of individualistic behavioural change and lifestyle recommendations to ‘stave off’ the condition. Contrary to this media discourse, in carers' talk there was scant use of hyperbolic metaphor or reference to individual responsibility for dementia, and any corresponding blame and accountability. I argue that the presence of individualistic dementia ‘preventative’ behaviour in media discourse is problematic, especially in comparison to other more ‘controllable’ and treatable chronic conditions. Engagement with, and critique of, the nascent panic-blame cultural context may be fruitful in enhancing positive social change for people diagnosed with dementia and their carers. Blackwell Publishing Ltd 2014-07 2014-08-01 /pmc/articles/PMC4145707/ /pubmed/24935028 http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/1467-9566.12122 Text en © 2014 The Author Sociology of Health & Illness published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of Foundation for Sociology of Health and Illness. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
spellingShingle Original Articles
Peel, Elizabeth
‘The living death of Alzheimer's’ versus ‘Take a walk to keep dementia at bay’: representations of dementia in print media and carer discourse
title ‘The living death of Alzheimer's’ versus ‘Take a walk to keep dementia at bay’: representations of dementia in print media and carer discourse
title_full ‘The living death of Alzheimer's’ versus ‘Take a walk to keep dementia at bay’: representations of dementia in print media and carer discourse
title_fullStr ‘The living death of Alzheimer's’ versus ‘Take a walk to keep dementia at bay’: representations of dementia in print media and carer discourse
title_full_unstemmed ‘The living death of Alzheimer's’ versus ‘Take a walk to keep dementia at bay’: representations of dementia in print media and carer discourse
title_short ‘The living death of Alzheimer's’ versus ‘Take a walk to keep dementia at bay’: representations of dementia in print media and carer discourse
title_sort ‘the living death of alzheimer's’ versus ‘take a walk to keep dementia at bay’: representations of dementia in print media and carer discourse
topic Original Articles
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4145707/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24935028
http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/1467-9566.12122
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