QUEM ESTÁ AÍ, ONDE ANTES ERA ELE? Representações sociais do cuidar entre familiares de idosos portadores de demência

Abstract

The care/cared relations, even as old as men, remain current and central to the comprehension of the senses attributed to the health/diasease process. On this perspective and in conjunction with the factors related to the population aging, in the demented illness and about the necessary care, it arises the problem of the demented old people family care-talcer. One of the sides of this problem was investigated with the purpose of characterizing the care and the old people, as well as aprehend and analyze the care/cared representation elaborated by this group of subjects. So, the Social Representation Theory was the support and guarantee of a quanti-qualitative approach of multidiscipline charater. The method used resulted in the organization of a coupus compounded by discursive material collecled with the help of twenty care-takers who live in the city of Campina Grande, PB. To collect data it was used a free-association test, semi-structured interview and a quiz to characterize the care-takers and the old sick people. To analyze it was uied a descriptive statistic treatment of the qualilied data and the technique of the collected speech content thematic analysis. Such procedures resulted in the characterization and context of the care-takers and old people and on the identification of 4 categories of care/cared: pragmatic manifestation, afective, philosophical aspect and temporal manifestation. These categories are representatives poles around cuhich articulate and structure representations that show the transformation of the strange, that the dement pictures involve, into a family. It indicales, yet, the results toward the social silence aroud the problem of the old demented people care-takers, and, simultaneously, toward to the necessity of carry on investigations about a theme so close to us, but still so invisible