Erikson's Theory Of Dementia

Erikson is familiarized with his formulation of eight stages of psychosocial development. The dominant antithesis in the eighth and the final stage of psychosocial development is “integrity versus despair” (Erikson, Erikson, & Kivnick, 1986). This stage of development is mostly stimulated by retirement or the death of intimate partners. Whether older adults could overcome the crisis highly depends on how they review their early lives. If older adults accept past failures and see their lives as successful, integrity could be built and wisdom could be attained. In contrast, with regrets and feeling dissatisfied with life, despair would be the result (Erikson, Erikson, & Kivnick, 1986). This may increase the opportunity of having mental health
For those early-stage dementia patients, it is possible to achieve “integrity” and “wisdom”. As Christine Bryden, a top civil servant diagnosed with dementia at 46, explained, she has worked through what it means to be “me” since grappling with the fear of ceasing to be. She maintained integrity during a period of tremendous loss as she recognized dementia as a “journey towards my true self, with dementia stripping away the layers of cognition and emotion, I’m becoming who I really am” (Bryden, 2005). This experience of Bryden echoes a recent review of qualitative research on “positive experiences whilst living with dementia” identified that individuals with dementia had similarly described gaining a kind of spiritual wisdom through living the dementia (Wolverson, Clarke and Moniz-Cook, 2015). Dementia not only enabled them to develop a broader view on life, it offers opportunities for the patients to develop and utilize the values and traits that the they had held throughout their lives. Dementia patients realise what they are losing, and what will always remain. People can in fact grow with dementia and find a deep sense of meaning in their life and in their dementia, and thereby motivating people to live each day, and to do things they want now. When the future is uncertain, people with dementia attribute more importance to the present. “Living in the Now” is also a wisdom that dementia patients can develop which illustrates the Erikson’s final stage virtue “wisdom” as an “informal and detached concern with life itself in the face of death itself” (Erikson, 1985). In short, all these indicate that dementia is not only an illness with an experience of loss, but there is also a possibility that the well-being of an individual can still be facilitated. Therefore, it may not be sufficient for us to