“Now I’m afraid to go out alone, because I’m afraid to losing my self”: performance and participation in daily life activities perception in a group of older persons with mild dementia

Abstract

People with mild dementia may have many difficulties associated to clinical symptoms in daily life activities, but also the person perception about his daily performance might influence the participation in activities. To know the perception of the people with mild dementia about their performance in daily life activities, it was made a qualitative study, it was conducted through focus groups with 13 persons with dementia participants from Kintun Center. Groups of four to five persons were formed, where they discussed about two main topics: important activities and activities where they perceive difficulties. Through a hermeneutic-interpretative with open coding analysis, we observed two main themes in relation to daily activities performance: on one hand, the need of keep meaningful roles and on the other hand, the auto marginality and the dependence sensation imposed by the social environment. These findings highlight the importance of considering the perception of the person with dementia and their environment in relation to the possibilities of participation in daily activities, considering that not only the clinical symptoms may affect the participation, it may be affected also by the interpretation about daily situations.