Department of Public Health, Taoyuan City Government, Taiwan.
Department of Long-Term Care, College of Health Technology, National Taipei University of Nursing and Health Sciences, Taiwan.
Gerontologist. 2020 Apr 2;60(3):525-534. doi: 10.1093/geront/gnz013.
Improving quality of life for community-dwelling older persons with dementia symptoms (PWDS) and family caregivers requires promoting dementia-friendly communities (DFC). However, little is known regarding older Taiwanese Aboriginal PWDS' experiences of living in the community. We explored these experiences for older Atayal PWDS and their families in Taiwan.
This grounded theory research used in-depth interviews to explore the perspectives of older PWDS (n = 4), their family members (n = 3), and key persons (n = 10) in an Atayal community in northern Taiwan. Data were analyzed using constant comparative analysis. Participants were interviewed between January and May 2015.
Participants' experiences were captured by the overarching concept of "low dementia awareness, high family-like ambience in the community." Despite the low/absent community awareness of dementia, older Atayal PWDS functioned as freely in the community as at home due to a family-like supportive environment. Aboriginal PWDS and their families also faced environmental challenges, e.g., environmental constraints and barriers to transportation access.
Our results suggest that this Aboriginal community and culture offer important DFC components, and these strengths could be further studied to enhance DFC models elsewhere. Despite these strengths in supporting PWDS, environmental challenges to transportation access still cause difficulties for PWDS and their families and need improvement. The Atayal community's low dementia awareness suggests that services introduced must be culturally appropriate and nondisruptive to existing supportive helping systems. Our study can be a model for future studies to understand and identify PWDS' needs in Indigenous communities.
提高有痴呆症状的社区居住老年人（PWDS）及其家庭照顾者的生活质量，需要促进痴呆症友好社区（DFC）的发展。然而，对于居住在社区中的台湾少数民族阿美族 PWDS 的经历，我们知之甚少。我们在台湾探索了这些居住在阿美族社区中的老年阿美族 PWDS 及其家庭的经历。
这项扎根理论研究使用深入访谈，探讨了台湾北部一个阿美族社区中 4 名老年 PWDS（n=4）、3 名家庭成员（n=3）和 10 名关键人物（n=10）的观点。使用恒定性比较分析对数据进行分析。参与者于 2015 年 1 月至 5 月接受访谈。
参与者的经历可以用“痴呆症意识低，社区家庭氛围高”的总体概念来描述。尽管社区对痴呆症的认识较低/缺乏，但由于类似家庭的支持环境，老年阿美族 PWDS 在社区中像在家里一样自由地生活。阿美族 PWDS 和他们的家庭也面临着环境挑战，例如环境限制和交通不便。
我们的研究结果表明，这个原住民社区和文化提供了重要的 DFC 组成部分，这些优势可以进一步研究，以加强其他地方的 DFC 模式。尽管这些优势为 PWDS 提供了支持，但交通不便仍然给 PWDS 和他们的家庭带来困难，需要改进。阿美族社区对痴呆症的低认识表明，引入的服务必须是文化上适当的，并且不会对现有的支持性帮助系统造成干扰。我们的研究可以为未来的研究提供一个模型，以了解和确定原住民社区中 PWDS 的需求。
