University of Nancy 2, France.
Dementia (London). 2013 Jan;12(1):137-51. doi: 10.1177/1471301211421230. Epub 2011 Oct 16.
One reason for the rise in the prevalence of Alzheimer's disease (AD) since the 1980s is the new association between the disease and aging. This paper explores the current representations of AD, questioning their relationships to aging, thanks to a literature review of 49 articles published in French and in English between 1995 and June 2010. Aging appears to be a concurrent diagnosis for AD, both for the lay public and for health professionals, but this confusion, which can be interpreted as a lack of medicalization of memory loss on the conceptual level, does not necessarily constitute an obstacle to medical intervention. The transformation of senile dementia into AD can diminish, as well as reinforce, stigmatization of people with AD. Moreover, elderly people with AD are subjected to both the persisting stigmas of aging and of dementia as well as, for most of them, that of feminine cognitive incompetence.
自 20 世纪 80 年代以来,阿尔茨海默病(AD)的发病率上升的一个原因是,该疾病与衰老之间出现了新的关联。本文通过对 1995 年至 2010 年 6 月期间以法文和英文发表的 49 篇文章进行文献回顾,探讨了当前 AD 的表现形式,并对其与衰老的关系提出了质疑。衰老似乎是 AD 的并存诊断,无论是对公众还是对卫生专业人员而言,但这种混淆,从概念层面上可以被解读为对记忆力丧失的医学化不足,不一定会对医疗干预构成障碍。将老年痴呆症转变为 AD,可以减少也可以加强对 AD 患者的污名化。此外,患有 AD 的老年人同时受到衰老和痴呆症的持续污名化的影响,而且对他们中的大多数人来说,还受到女性认知能力不足的污名化。