Alzheimer's Disease Research Today is a free monthly online journal that collates and summarizes the latest research about Alzheimer's Disease, including details on diagnosis, memory loss, heredity, treatment, medication.

Losing one's memory in early Alzheimer's disease.

Parsons-Suhl K, Johnson ME, McCann JJ, Solberg S

Memorial University of Newfoundland, St. John's, Newfoundland, Canada.

A Heideggerian hermeneutical phenomenological research method was used to investigate the experience of memory loss in twelve individuals with early Alzheimer's disease or mild cognitive impairment. Data analysis proceeded as described by Diekelmann, Allen, and Tanner (1989), and incorporated the methods of Benner (1994), Thomas and Pollio (2002), and van Manen (1990). Three constitutive patterns with relational themes were identified. The first pattern, experiencing breakdown, consisted of two themes: awakening to breakdown and living with forgetting. The second pattern, temporality, consisted of three themes: being in the nothing, forgetting the past, and looking ahead. The third pattern, managing forgetting, consisted of the themes: remembering with cues, writing things down, recognizing what made remembering better or worse, and using laughter. The finding show that early Alzheimer's disease is more than an illness of cognitive losses and that forgetting is significant in light of the meaning that it has within everyday life.

Published 4 January 2008 in Qual Health Res, 18(1): 31-42.
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