Social support for patients with Alzheimers disease in Turkey

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Sanem C

Akdeniz Unıversıty, Turkey

: Int J Ment Health Psychiatry

Abstract

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Aging phenomenon can also be observed significantly as a result of demographic changes in Turkey. The increase in life expectancy and also decrease of birth rate dramatically, support demographic changes. According to data of the Turkish Statistical Institute in 2018, 8.7% of people in Turkey over their 65’s. Depends on the Turkey Alzheimer Association, average 500.000 elderly people have dementia disease. Dementia is not a specific disease, it’s a group of symptoms associated with disturbance of multiple brain functions such as memory, thinking, coordination, calculation, learning capacity, language etc. Chronic illness such as Alzheimer disease makes the family suffer sometimes even more than patients so that social support becomes more important to make family or caregivers relief. The reason of these burdens of caregiving to the Alzheimer's patients, according to the literature caregivers divided in to “formal carers” and “informal carers”, some sources have the other type which is “unpaid caregiver”. “Unpaid caregiver” comprise of family members or friends. Definition of social support according to Goldsmith, McDermott & Alexander (2000) is a communicational behaviours purpose of interaction or build a relation in social life by teaching, persuading or informing. Alzheimer patients have rights to have social support as much as other people in the social system. Taking into account all of these and number of Alzheimer patients all over the world, besides than medical care, they need social interactions and support to get involved into social life rather than being alone or isolated from the society. However, to provide more Alzheimer's patient and relatives meeting centers to the public is the solution of the burden of caregivers and families. At the same time, these centers give an opportunity to have a social life and have a social support for Alzheimer patients.

Biography

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Sanem Cetın has completed her bachelor at the age of 23 years from Akdeniz University and was an exchange student of J F Oberlin Univertisy at Japan/Tokyo. She is pursuing her Master Programme at Catholic University of the Sacred Heart. She has been studying Management & Leadership in Melbourne, and she was a Volunteer İnstructor National Dementia Programme in Turkey and also has a research on Age Discrimination. She has a researh project on Age Discrimination on the other hand, member of Sigma Phi Omega Gerontology International Honor Society in Turkey and Member of Board at Turkish Association of Gerontology.

E-mail: cetinsanem@gmail.com