Senile Dementia is one of the dispositional mental disorder which has been known to the world since Hippocratic age. It has become a wide-spread social problem all over the world because of chronic disease processes and the demands of dependent care for several years as well as improbability of treatment of it at the causal level. Essentially, life styles of the older generation differ from those of the younger generation. While the former is used to the patriarchal system and the spirit of filial piet and respect, the latter is pragmatized and individualized under the effects of the Western material civilization. these differences between the two generations cause conflict between family members. In particular, the pain and conflict of care-givers who take care of a totally dependent dementia patient not only is inciting to the collapse of the family union, but is expanding into a serious social problem. According to this practical difficulty, this study has tried to compare dementia care-givers' experiences inter-culturally and to help set up more proper nursing interventions, describing and explaining them through ethnographies by participant observation and in-depth interviews that enable seeing them in a more close, honest and certain way. It also tries to provide a theoretical model of nursing care for dementia patients which is proper to Korean culture. This study is composed of 12 participants(4 males, 8 females) whose ages range from 37-71 years. The relations of patients are 5 spouses(3 husbands, 2 wives), 4 daughters-in-law, 2 daughters, and 1 son-in-law. The following are the care-givers' meaning of experiences that results of the study shows. The first is "psychological conflict". It contains the minds of getting angry, reproaching, being driven to dispair, blaming oneself, giving up lives, and being afraid, hopeless, and resigned. The second is "physical, social and psychological pressure". At this stage, care-givers are shown to be under stress of both body and soul for the lack of freedom and tiredness. They also feel constraint because they hardly cope with the care and live through others' eyes. The third is "isolation". It makes the relationship of patient care-giver to be estranged, without understanding each other. they, also, experience indifference such as being upset and left alone. The forth is "acceptance". They gradually have compassion, bear up and then adapt themselves to the circumstances they are in. The fifth is "love". Now they learn to reward the other with love. It is also shown that this stage contains the process of winning other recognition. The final is "hope". In this stage they really want situations to go smoothly and hope everything will be O.K. These consequence enable us to summarize the principles of care experience such as, in the early stage, negative response such as physical, psychological confusion, pain and conflict are primary. Then the stage of acceptance emerges. It is initial positive response phase when care-givers may admit their situations. As time passes by a positive response stage emerges. At last they have love and hope. Three stages we noted above; however, there are never consistent situations. Rather it gradually comes into the stage of acceptance, repeating continuous conflict, pressure and isolation. If any interest and understanding of families or the support of surrounding society lack, it will again be converted to negative responses sooner or later. Otherwise, positive responses like hope and love can be encourage if the family and the surroundings give active aids and understanding. After all, the principles of dementia care experiences neither stay at any stage, nor develop from negative stages to positive stages steadily. They are cycling systems in which negative responses are constantly being converted. I would like to suggest the following based on the above conclusions: First, the systematic and planned education of dementia should be performed in order to enhance public relations. Second, a special medical treatment center which deals with dementia, under government's charge, should be managed. Third, the various studies approaching dementia care experiences result in the development of more reasonable and useful nursing guidelines.
This study is to define the caring experience of mothers with insulin-dependent diabetes mellitus children, by finding core category, contextual factors, intervening factors, and the patterns of caring, and to develop a practice theory on it. Research method followed grounded theory methodology by Strauss and Corbin. Subjects were six mothers, whose children have had insulin-dependent diabetes mellitus for 4 months to 14 years by the interview time. They were selected by theoretical sampling. Data were collected from September, 1995 to January, 1996. Interview were done by long interview took 50 minutes to 2 hours. Content of interview was recorded and transcribed later. Based on the results of previous interview, content of next interview was planned until data reached to the saturation point. Results were as follows : One hundred and forty concepts were found. These concepts were grouped into thirty-three categories, and then to ten categories. Mothers with diabetic child were revealed to face "being overwhelmed by burden". Overwhelming by burden is found to be progressed through the cycle production-coping-decrease or in crease process. Mothers showed four patterns of adaptation in caring the diabetic children. 1) If mothers felt large amount of overwhelming by burden because of difficulty of caring and unsympathizing but they had sufficient support, no condition of the child, and their coping mechanism was positive, most of them overcome with strong will, but some fell into burnout. 2) If mothers felt large amount of overwhelming by burden because of difficulty of caring, unsympathizing, insufficient support, serious condition of the child, and their coping mechanism was negative, they fell into burnout by coping with feeling. 3) In mothers felt small amount of overwhelming by burden because of little difficulty of caring and sympathizing, sufficient support, no serious condition of the child, but their coping was negative, most of them fell into burnout by coping with feeling, but some overcome. 4) If mothers felt small amount of overwhelming by burden because of little difficulty of caring and unsympathizing, sufficient support, no serious condition of the child, and their coping was positive, they overcome with strong will. On the basis of the above result, in order to help mothers take good care of their children, nursing assesment and intervention on life readjustment, and getting support should be required. Especially, through understanding mothers' personalities, individual support consistent with each of them should be required. Therefore education, counseling, mutual support and exchange of information will have to be accomplished.