[Dementia expressed in metaphors]

Abstract

Dementia expressed in metaphors In healthcare, both patients and doctors use a lot of metaphors in their communication. Generally, not a lot of attention is paid to this, however, the use of metaphors is important to the patients' experience of both quality of life and quality of care. In our society, many negative metaphors are used about people with dementia, and these reflect the general way dementia is perceived by society. We investigated the sort of metaphors that people with dementia themselves use when talking about their lives with dementia. We found that people with dementia use a variety of metaphors to describe their disease. When doctors become more sensitive to the use of metaphors by themselves and their patients, this could lead to better insight into the specific experience patients go through and to healthcare that is better adjusted to these experiences.