Identity, Semiotics, and Use of Symbols in Adult Day Services

Dancing With Dementia: Exploring the Embodied Dimensions of Creativity and Social Engagement

Background and Objectives

Dance is increasingly being implemented in residential long-term care to improve health and function. However, little research has explored the potential of dance to enhance social inclusion by supporting embodied self-expression, creativity, and social engagement of persons living with dementia and their families.

Research Design and Methods

This was a qualitative sequential multiphase study of Sharing Dance Seniors, a dance program that includes a suite of remotely streamed dance sessions that are delivered weekly to participants in long-term care and community settings. Our analysis focused on the participation of 67 persons living with dementia and 15 family carers in residential long-term care homes in Manitoba, Canada. Data included participant observation, video recordings, focus groups, and interviews; all data were analyzed thematically.

Results

We identified 2 themes: playfulness and sociability. Playfulness refers to the ways that the participants let go of what is “real” and became immersed in the narrative of a particular dance, often adding their own style. Sociability captures the ways in which the narrative approach of the Sharing Dance Seniors program encourages connectivity/intersubjectivity between participants and their community; participants co-constructed and collaboratively animated the narrative of the dances.

Discussion and Implications

Our findings highlight the playful and imaginative nature of how persons living with dementia engage with dance and demonstrate how this has the potential to challenge the stigma associated with dementia and support social inclusion. This underscores the urgent need to make dance programs such as Sharing Dance Seniors more widely accessible to persons living with dementia everywhere.

Care Home Life and Identity: A Qualitative Case Study

Background and Objectives

The transition to a care home can involve multiple changes and losses that can affect an older person’s well-being and identity. It is not clear how older people perceive and manage their identity within a care home over time. This study explores how living in a care home affects the identities of residents and how they address this in their daily lives.

Research Design and Methods

A multiple qualitative case study approach incorporated interview and observational data. Eighteen semistructured interviews and 260 hr of observations were conducted over 1 year with care home residents, relatives, and staff across three care homes within Greater Manchester, UK. Data were analyzed using framework analysis, drawing on the social identity perspective as an interpretive lens.

Results

Four themes were identified: (a) changing with age, (b) independence and autonomy, (c) bounded identity, and (d) social comparison. The impact of aging that initially altered residents’ identities was exacerbated by the care home environment. Institutional restrictions jeopardized independence and autonomy, provoking residents to redefine this within the allowances of the care home. Strict routines and resource constraints of well-meaning staff resulted in the bounded expression of personalities. Consequently, to forge a positive identity, residents without dementia engaged in social comparison with residents with dementia, emphasizing their superior cognitive and physical abilities.

Discussion and Implications

Social comparison as an adaptive strategy has previously been unidentified in care home literature. Residents need more support to express their identities, which may reduce the necessity of social comparison, and improve interrelationships and well-being.