An investigation of the relationships between the dementia care and the caregiver's lay theory of the emotional individual difference for dementia.

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Few psychological studies have been conducted on the individual differences of the dementia patients. In this study, we investigated the relationship between the dementia care and the caregiver's lay theory of the emotional and characteristic individual differences for dementia patient. Subjects were 230 caregivers of the several nursing-care facilities and the group-homes. We also investigate the lay theory of 25 family members of dementia by using semi-structured interview. Main results of this study were as follows.1)We proposed Japanese coding categories for the emotions of dementia person based on the Eric Method (Fleming, 1999).2) The caregiver's rating for the emotional and characteristic individual differences of the dementia patients were factor analyzed. Three factors (positive, negative, discomfort) were elicited on their emotional aspects. Four factors (aggressive, cooperative, conscientious, and autistic) were found for the characteristic aspects.3)The caregivers have come … More to negative impressions on the dementia patients with the increase of their years of experiences.4)The lay theories of the families of dementia patients were analyzed. The same dimensions were elicited both of the emotional and characteristics aspects.5)The family felt a characteristic change of the dementia person. Positivity, cooperation and conscientiousness were significantly reduced compared with their premorbid character.6)We divided the dementia person to eight types based on the split-half score of three characteristic dimensions (aggression, cooperation, conscientiousness). These eight types (Apathy, Withdrawal, Sensitive, Active, Aggressive, Obsessive, Egotistic, and Self-respected) were moderately related with the caregiver's cognition of the appropriate style of care.These results showed that the caregivers had their lay theory about the individual difference of dementia and implicitly choose their care style appropriate for the dementia person. Then, we proposed to use these eight type discriminations for the education of the novice caregivers. Less