Self-perceived problems in daily activities and strategy building in people without, with mild and severe dementia

Purpose It is well known that people with dementia experience severe problems in their daily lives. Less is known about how self-perceived problems decline throughout the course of dementia together with their decline in memory and executive functions. Hence, we wanted to assess self-perceived problems when performing daily activities as well as possible developed strategies that help to prevent mentioned difficulties at different cognitive stages for older people.

Methods We analyzed qualitative semi-structured interviews conducted with 25 people (age (mean: 67.64; SD: 23.625), sex (f: 14 (56%); m: 17 (68%)), cognitive status (healthy: 6; mild demented: 7; severe demented: 12)) based on the Grounded Theory. The interviews further comprised a cognitive and a functioning assessment, including the MoCa, the script generation task, and the IADL Scale, that were used as a base for the qualitative questions concerning self-perceived problems and thereupon developed strategies in daily activities.

Results Three main categories where identified, (i) disturbing factors when performing daily activities, (ii) autonomy level variations and (iii) self-established daily life strategies to circumvent mentioned problems. Findings suggest that orderliness and making notes help whereas conversations, noise, and stress disturb the performance of daily activities. People who were aware of problems, reported developing strategies, while people who did not have awareness of any problems did not. Only people without and with mild dementia recognize problems and therefore develop strategies.

Conclusions It turns out that a certain cognitive status is needed to develop strategies and be aware of problems. Further research is needed to establish more strategies that help dementia sufferers as well as older people to delay the progress or onset of the disease.

Publication History

Article published online:
02 September 2021