If: "I Think, Therefore I Am," Then: "I Can't Think, Therefore I'm Not"?

AbstractThe social construction of certain areas in medicine has enabled physicians to affect many individuals, which in the past, would not interact with the medical profession. In the area of mental health, increasing medical technology has enabled identification of Alzheimer's disease. Unfortunately, this diagnosis has to be made post-mortem. To compensate, the medical profession applies the label of "dementia" to address "abnormal" cognitive decline. How individuals adjust to the label of dementia and the effects of social structure in the adjustment process is missing in the sociological literature. In order to understand the illness experience and its effects on society a mixed methods approach is necessary. How the dementia experience affects individuals must be determined from the individuals themselves. When people are encouraged to report their feelings about instances in their lives, valuable information can be collected and analyzed. The illness experience of dementia needs to be added to the sociological agenda. Establishing social patterns within the dementia experience can compliment the existing caregiver literature to provide a comprehensive view of dementia's effects on society. This paper will show how application of the stress paradigm is a valuable tool to study this phenomenon. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]