The Understanding and Experiences of Living with Dementia in Chinese New Zealanders

Gary Cheung, April Yuehan Su, Karen Wu, Blake Yue, Susan Yates, Adrian Martinez Ruiz, Rita Krishnamurthi and Sarah Cullum
Additional contact information
Gary Cheung: Department of Psychological Medicine, University of Auckland, Auckland 1023, New Zealand
April Yuehan Su: Department of Psychological Medicine, University of Auckland, Auckland 1023, New Zealand
Karen Wu: Mental Health Services for Older People, Counties Manukau Health, Auckland 2025, New Zealand
Blake Yue: School of Management, Massey University, Auckland 0745, New Zealand
Susan Yates: Department of Psychological Medicine, University of Auckland, Auckland 1023, New Zealand
Adrian Martinez Ruiz: Department of Psychological Medicine, University of Auckland, Auckland 1023, New Zealand
Rita Krishnamurthi: National Institute for Stroke and Applied Neurosciences, Auckland University of Technology, Auckland 0627, New Zealand
Sarah Cullum: Department of Psychological Medicine, University of Auckland, Auckland 1023, New Zealand

IJERPH, 2022, vol. 19, issue 3, 1-13

Abstract: Little is known about the lived experience of dementia in the New Zealand Chinese community. This study aims to explore the understanding and experiences of living with dementia in Chinese New Zealanders. Participants were recruited from a memory service and a community dementia day programme. In-depth interviews were conducted by bilingual and bicultural researchers. The recorded interviews were transcribed and thematically analysed. Sixteen people living with dementia and family carers participated in this study. The first theme revealed the lack of understanding of dementia prior to diagnosis, the commonly used term of “brain shrinkage” and that dementia is associated with getting older. The second theme covered the symptoms experienced by people with dementia and how family carers found anhedonia and apathy particularly concerning. The third theme highlighted the tension between cultural obligation and carer stress. The fourth theme is about the stigma attached to dementia. Our results provide some insight into ways to improve dementia care for Chinese New Zealanders, including targeted psychoeducation in the Chinese community to improve awareness and to reduce stigma, access to person-centred interventions, and learning about strategies for healthy ageing to live well with dementia, and emotional support and psychoeducation for family carers to reduce carer stress.

Keywords: dementia; Chinese; health literacy; lived experience; coping (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I I1 I3 Q Q5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/19/3/1280/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/19/3/1280/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jijerp:v:19:y:2022:i:3:p:1280-:d:732062

Access Statistics for this article

IJERPH is currently edited by Ms. Jenna Liu

More articles in IJERPH from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().