Yes / Purpose This article adopts an embodiment lens to explore the individual leisure experiences of people living with dementia when engaging in nature-based pursuits. It focuses on how people living with dementia frame their everyday experiences of nature and how these are shaped by any cognitive challenges and/or other comorbidities affecting physical health. Design/methodology/approach Taking a phenomenological research approach, we interviewed 15 people living with dementia and 15 family carers of people with dementia to explore how people with dementia engage with nature as a subjective leisure experience. We analysed their accounts using reflexive thematic analysis. Findings The findings reveal how people living with dementia frame their experiences of nature-based pursuits through three interlinked themes of ‘bodily feelings and emotions’, ‘sense of self and identity’ and ‘connectivity to others’. Originality/value The paper contributes to knowledge by examining through the lens of embodiment a neglected and overlooked dimension of everyday leisure: how nature is encountered, negotiated and enjoyed. The paper illustrates how nature and the outdoors may help people living with dementia to continue to enjoy prior leisure pursuits and thus achieve a degree of continuity in their everyday lives.

AIDS Dementia Complex (ADC) is a common neurological complication of HIV/AIDS. ADC is characterized by cognitive, behavioral, and motor impairments including slowed thinking, decreased concentration, forgetfulness, apathy, irritability, anxiety, clumsiness, leg weakness, and altered handwriting. Symptoms progress into pronounced verbal and motor slowing, extensive thought disturbances, profound disorientation, hostility, ataxia, incontinence, and eventually a near vegetative state. Presently, no cure is available for ADC. However, treatment with the antiretroviral drug, zidovudine (AZT), has been shown to slow the progression of ADC and improve functioning. Other promising pharmacological treatments under investigation include newer antiretroviral drugs, combination use of protease inhibitors and zidovudine, calcium channel blocking agents, receptor antagonists for excitatory neurotransmitters, and antagonists of cytokines and inflammatory agents. Psychosocial interventions for managing patients in the early stages of ADC focus on preserving independence, promoting self-esteem, and assisting patients to compensate for cognitive changes. During the later stages of ADC, interventions deal with adapting patients' environments to ensure safety and maintain structure, routine, and simplicity. Prompt intervention is essential to improving the quality and length of these patients' lives.

Dementia, a clinical condition that affects the psychological ability of patients, is distinguished by a significant overall decline in cognitive function that results in distorted perception. Guiding nursing practice in the long-term care (LTC) setting to decrease the unnecessary use of psychotropics is critical because doing so relates to the patients' quality of life and safety. In the LTC facility that served as the practicum site for this study, there was an observed overuse of psychotropic medications in the care of patients with dementia. The practice-focused question guiding this project asked whether a nursing staff development program would decrease the use of psychotropics in dementia patients. The purpose of the project was to inform nursing staff through an educational program on alternative methods to use when dementia patients exhibit increased disturbing behaviors. The conceptual framework for the project was the knowledge-to-action model. The nursing staff development program had a positive effect on the nursing staff as evidenced by a statistically significant improvement in knowledge and attitudes about the use of psychotropics in caring for dementia patients. The use of psychotropic in the dementia patient decreased from 22.32% to 15.77%, the lowest score achieved by the organization in 5 years. The dementia patients benefited from this project and its positive social change implications for nursing practice by decreasing dementia patients use of psychotropics, minimizing their side effects to the patients and providing an overall feeling of well-being.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Florida State University, 2003. / Advisor: Dr. Michelle Bourgeois, Florida State University, College of Communication, Dept. of Communication Disorders. Title and description from dissertation home page (viewed Oct. 6, 2003). Includes bibliographical references.

This thesis explores the communication of a group of older people with dementia living in a residential care home and specifically, seeks to understand how living with dementia in a care home influences communication. The study draws broadly on a symbolic interactionist perspective and uses an ethnographic, inclusive, video methodology. In so doing, the study grounds the research in the experiences of the older residents with dementia and explores communication as it is interwoven with social life. The empirical data, on which this thesis is based, were gathered over the course of six months in one residential care home in Central Scotland. Analysis of these data, in conjunction with the theoretical literature informing the study, led to the development of a framework and a set of concepts to understand the communication of the older people with dementia living in residential care. This framework was used to examine the ways in which the older residents' experiences of institutionalisation, ageing, and dementia, generally, and of life in the care setting, specifically, influenced their communication. The findings revealed that the older residents made diverse meanings of their experiences in the home, and mat many of the meanings that they made were threatening to their self-identity, self-determinacy and social relationships. The residents engaged in a range of strategies to respond to the impact of these meanings and to negotiate their life in the care home. The research presented in this thesis has many implications for understanding the experiences of older people with dementia in residential care. In particular, the research highlights the need for a new social understanding of dementia, that examines the experience of dementia in relation to broad structural and cultural processes and that seeks to promote the social inclusion and citizenship of older people with dementia.

Diss. (sammanfattning) Stockholm : Karolinska institutet, 2002. / Härtill 5 uppsatser.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Nevada, Reno, 2008. / "December, 2008." Includes bibliographical references (leaves 102-116). Online version available on the World Wide Web.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Missouri--Columbia, 1999. / Typescript. Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 103-107). Also available on the Internet.

Thesis (doctoral)--Lund University, 1995. / Added t.p. with thesis statement inserted.

Thesis (M.S.)--University of Michigan, 1989.