Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, National University of Singapore, Singapore 119260, Singapore.
Lloyd's Register Foundation Institute for the Public Understanding of Risk, National University of Singapore, Singapore 119260, Singapore.
Int J Environ Res Public Health. 2021 Oct 26;18(21):11241. doi: 10.3390/ijerph182111241.
Although there has been an increase in awareness of the struggles experienced by caregivers, discourse on caregiving remains confined mostly to academia, policy circles or the family unit. There have been suggestions that public discourse on informal caregiving dwells overwhelmingly on the outsize toll it takes on the health of caregivers. However, few studies have examined societal narratives on caregivers-a gap our study aims to fill. We leveraged an online media database of 12 billion words collated from over 30 million articles to explore societal narratives on caregivers in six Asian countries. Computational linguistics and statistical analysis were applied to study the content of narratives on caregivers. The prevalence of societal narratives on caregivers was highest in Singapore-five times higher than Sri Lanka, which evidenced the lowest prevalence. Findings reveal that the inadequacies of institutional care as well as the need to train and empower caregivers are pressing issues that need to be prioritized on the policy agenda in Asia. Of broader significance, the diverse capabilities across Asia present opportunities for cross-country learning and capacity-building.
尽管人们对照顾者所经历的困难的认识有所提高，但关于照顾的讨论仍然主要局限于学术界、政策圈或家庭单位。有人认为，关于非正式照顾的公众讨论过于关注它对照顾者健康的巨大影响。然而，很少有研究考察关于照顾者的社会叙述——这是我们研究旨在填补的空白。我们利用一个从 3000 多万篇文章中收集的 120 亿字的在线媒体数据库，探索了六个亚洲国家关于照顾者的社会叙述。计算语言学和统计分析被应用于研究关于照顾者的叙述内容。在新加坡，关于照顾者的社会叙述的流行程度最高——是斯里兰卡的五倍，后者的流行程度最低。研究结果表明，机构护理的不足以及培训和赋权照顾者的必要性是亚洲政策议程上需要优先考虑的紧迫问题。更广泛地说，亚洲各地的多样化能力为跨国学习和能力建设提供了机会。
