Key UC Contact
What We Did
Many people with dementia are cared for initially by their spouse or other family member. However, as the disease progresses, the burden of care becomes greater and family caregivers can become increasingly exhausted. Many caregivers are not first-language speakers of English. They often cannot understand material from the internet and cannot afford the time or the money to go to caregiver training courses. We are preparing downloadable, easily read comic-style booklets in four languages that provide strategies for dealing with some of the dementia-care situations most frequently met. For example, there are suggestions for getting someone with dementia to talk, ideas for keeping them interested, ways to cope with repeated questions, how to deal with the anger that often accompanies the disease and warnings about the likelihood that, at some stage, they will wander off. The initial version of the comic was made for the USA and we have trialled it there. We are currently preparing similar graphic medicine novellas in Mandarin, Spanish and Tagalog, with non-photographic versions for Mandarin and Tagalog. The finished comics will be freely downloadable from the internet for computer, tablet or phone access.
Who Was Involved
Associate Professor Margaret Maclagan UC and Professor Emerita Boyd Davis, UNC-Charlotte
Why It Matters
Dementia is one of the most rapidly increasing conditions throughout the world. The incidence of dementia is projected to continue to rise as improvements in health care allow people to live longer. Those who care for people with dementia inevitably become tired and need easily accessible information so they can interact more easily with the people they care for. These comics are a start towards providing such information to help alleviate the burden carried by caregivers in a format that will be familiar to many caregivers, especially international or immigrant caregivers (e.g. Filipinas in NZ, Taiwan and the US and Mexicans in the US). We urgently need similar material for NZ.
Learn More
- See the official NZ website www.health.govt.nz/your-health/conditions-and-treatments/diseases-and-illnesses/dementia
Boyd Davis, and Margaret Maclagan (2020) UH as a pragmatic marker in dementia discourse. Journal of Pragmatics Volume 156, Pages 83-99. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pragma.2018.12.005 - Boyd Davis and Margaret Maclagan (2020) Signposts, guideposts, and stalls: Pragmatic and discourse markers in dementia discourse. In Trini Stickle (ed) Learning from the talk of persons with dementia: A practical guide to interaction and interactional research 63-83. Ed Trini Stickle. Palgrave Macmillan: Switzerland. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-43977-4
- Boyd Davis and Margaret Maclagan 2017. Care across languages. The Linguist 56(4):26-27. https://thelinguist.uberflip.com
