Suicidal Ideation among Older Family Caregivers for a Person with Dementia.

OBJECTIVES: This pilot study aimed to describe the phenomenon of suicidal ideation among caregivers who were aged 60 and over and who provided care for a person with dementia. METHODS: A qualitative study was conducted, using a descriptive method. Semi-structured interviews were administered to caregivers who had or were having suicidal thoughts whilst caring for a relative with dementia. RESULTS: Six caregivers were interviewed. Four caregivers reported experiencing active suicidal ideation whilst caregiving. Two subjects mentioned wishing for the death of their care recipient. While saturation criteria were not all met themes regarding suicidal ideation types and developmental contexts emerged. Findings suggest that family conflicts, placement difficulties, exhaustion, feelings of injustice, and loneliness contributed to the development of suicidal ideation. CONCLUSIONS: Suicidal distress can emerge from the dementia caregiving context and these findings highlight a complex phenomenon among caregivers. The understanding of caregivers' suicidal distress is of great importance to guide screening and intervention efforts. Research is needed to keep the implication and well-being of older caregivers. CLINICAL IMPLICATIONS: Screening efforts should consider the caregiving context as a conducive environment for suicidal distress and clinicians could use this knowledge to provide specific interventions to distressed carers.

Reasoning and concurrent timing: a study of the mechanisms underlying the effect of emotion on reasoning.

Negative emotions typically have an adverse effect on reasoning, especially analytic or logical reasoning. This effect can be explained using an attentional framework in which emotion detracts limited-capacity cognitive resources which are required for reasoning. Another possibility is that the effect of emotion on reasoning is mediated by arousal, as previous research has shown that physiological arousal can be associated with decreased reasoning performance. In this research, we used a dual-task paradigm combining a syllogistic reasoning task and a time production task. Prospective timing allows to disentangle the effects of attention and arousal: time productions should lengthen if emotion takes up cognitive resources that are therefore not available for timing, whereas time productions should shorten if emotional reasoning results from increased arousal. Results from two experiments confirm the adverse impact of emotion on logical reasoning performance. Reasoning about emotional contents led to lengthened time productions, which suggests that the capture of limited cognitive resources is the main factor accounting for the adverse effect of emotion on reasoning and not arousal.

Suicidal Ideation in Canadian Family Caregivers for a Person with Dementia: A Portrait of the Situation.

This study aimed to explore the prevalence of suicidal thoughts and potential associations (i.e., strength and direction) with caregiver characteristics or factors. A targeted survey was distributed to dementia caregivers aged 55+ years. Questions concerning psychological distress, suicidal thoughts while caregiving and antecedents of suicidal behaviours were administered. A sample of 71 French-speaking Canadian caregivers completed the survey between May and October 2019. Among them, 52.1 per cent (n = 37) reported suicidal ideation while providing care to a relative or a friend living with dementia. Caregivers who presented suicidal ideation reported more abusive behaviour toward the care recipient. Caregivers who reported suicidal thoughts were significantly more distressed than caregivers without them on measures of burden, depression, and anxiety. Suicidal thoughts in caregivers are important evaluation targets, primarily for the prevention of suicide, but also because caregivers who report suicidal thoughts also present a heightened risk for abusing the care recipient.

The Experience of Adults Bereaved by the Suicide of a Close Elderly Relative: A Qualitative Pilot Study.

Suicide in older persons is a serious issue in many countries. The act of intentionally causing one's own death is often associated with lack of social support, thwarted belongingness, or chronic interpersonal difficulties. Therefore, suicide has a significant interpersonal dimension that can influence those left behind. However, studies that have investigated the impact of older adults' suicide on their family are scarce. The objective of this pilot study was to assess the feasibility of a qualitative research on the psychosocial experience of adults bereaved by the suicide of an elderly relative. This research could recruit three participants (daughter, grand-son, and grand-niece) who had lost to suicide a close family member aged between 75 and 90. The analysis of the content of the semi-structured interviews revealed seven main themes: (1) finding an explanation to the suicide, (2) give meaning to the loss, (3) the emotional processes of mourning, (4) the repercussions of the suicide on the individual and the family, (5) looking for support, (6) the taboo and secrecy of suicide, and (7) perceptions of aging and the end of life. To explain the suicide of their loved one, the bereaved mentioned various factors related to aging, such as loss of autonomy, illness, and fear of placement. Although the older relative was perceived to be approaching death because of his/her age, the suicide was still unexpected and shocking and led to various emotions (shock, anger, and guilt) and to family conflicts. Suicide remains a taboo subject, but the newly legalized medical assistance in dying is seen as a potential solution to suffering in old age. Further investigation is clearly needed on this topic and this pilot study indicates that the main difficulties will lie in the choice of selection criteria for participants and in the recruitment process.

Améliorer le rappel des individus âgés de 60 ans et plus à l'aide de l'entretien cognitif : une revue et méta-analyse.

Les aînés sont souvent perçus comme des témoins peu fiables, une perception qui est partiellement appuyée par des travaux qui démontrent que les témoignages des aînés tendent à être moins détaillés que ceux produits par des témoins plus jeunes. L'entretien cognitif est une technique d'interrogatoire qui repose sur des stratégies de rappel issues des sciences cognitives. Plusieurs travaux récents démontrent l'efficacité de l'entretien cognitif auprès d'échantillons de jeunes adultes. Toutefois, la recherche portant sur l'utilisation de l'entretien cognitif auprès de témoins âgés est récente et en développement. Le présent article effectue une synthèse des travaux portant sur l'efficacité de l'entretien cognitif auprès d'aînés ainsi qu'une méta-analyse des données publiées à ce jour. La méta-analyse comprend sept études traitant des performances de participants aînés et comparant l'efficacité de l'entretien cognitif à celle obtenue en employant d'autres techniques de rappel. Les résultats démontrent une augmentation du nombre de détails corrects rappelés quand l'entretien cognitif est utilisé. Cependant, les données actuelles ne permettent pas de conclusion valide pour le nombre de détails incorrects ou sur l'exactitude du rappel. La discussion présente les forces et faiblesses des travaux publiés à ce jour de manière à favoriser le développement futur de ce domaine de recherche.

The Cognitive Social Network in Dreams: Transitivity, Assortativity, and Giant Component Proportion Are Monotonic.

For five individuals, a social network was constructed from a series of his or her dreams. Three important network measures were calculated for each network: transitivity, assortativity, and giant component proportion. These were monotonically related; over the five networks as transitivity increased, assortativity increased and giant component proportion decreased. The relations indicate that characters appear in dreams systematically. Systematicity likely arises from the dreamer's memory of people and their relations, which is from the dreamer's cognitive social network. But the dream social network is not a copy of the cognitive social network. Waking life social networks tend to have positive assortativity; that is, people tend to be connected to others with similar connectivity. Instead, in our sample of dream social networks assortativity is more often negative or near 0, as in online social networks. We show that if characters appear via a random walk, negative assortativity can result, particularly if the random walk is biased as suggested by remote associations.

Bivalent task switching and memory load: Similar costs on reaction times, different costs on concurrent timing.

Some studies suggest that time estimation involves executive control resources. This proposition was challenged recently, however, by results showing simultaneous performance of executive and timing tasks with no cost. The present study examined whether bivalent switching, in which targets may be relevant in more than one task, would interfere with timing. In Experiment 1, the effect of switching between memory search and a classification task was compared with the effect of varying load in memory search. Effects of task switching and of increasing load were similar on reaction times (RTs) in an RT control condition, but drastically different on concurrent timing: Time productions were affected by memory search only. In Experiment 2, the effect of task switching preparation, which involves advance reconfiguration in the switching paradigm, was examined. Preparation to a switch and timing could be performed simultaneously with no cost. These results reveal a fundamental difference between memory search and task switching in terms of dual-task costs, and show that timing and some executive control tasks do not share cognitive resources.

Parallel effects of memory set activation and search on timing and working memory capacity.

Accurately estimating a time interval is required in everyday activities such as driving or cooking. Estimating time is relatively easy, provided a person attends to it. But a brief shift of attention to another task usually interferes with timing. Most processes carried out concurrently with timing interfere with it. Curiously, some do not. Literature on a few processes suggests a general proposition, the Timing and Complex-Span Hypothesis: A process interferes with concurrent timing if and only if process performance is related to complex span. Complex-span is the number of items correctly recalled in order, when each item presented for study is followed by a brief activity. Literature on task switching, visual search, memory search, word generation and mental time travel supports the hypothesis. Previous work found that another process, activation of a memory set in long term memory, is not related to complex-span. If the Timing and Complex-Span Hypothesis is true, activation should not interfere with concurrent timing in dual-task conditions. We tested such activation in single-task memory search task conditions and in dual-task conditions where memory search was executed with concurrent timing. In Experiment 1, activating a memory set increased reaction time, with no significant effect on time production. In Experiment 2, set size and memory set activation were manipulated. Activation and set size had a puzzling interaction for time productions, perhaps due to difficult conditions, leading us to use a related but easier task in Experiment 3. In Experiment 3 increasing set size lengthened time production, but memory activation had no significant effect. Results here and in previous literature on the whole support the Timing and Complex-Span Hypotheses. Results also support a sequential organization of activation and search of memory. This organization predicts activation and set size have additive effects on reaction time and multiplicative effects on percent correct, which was found.

Timing is affected by demands in memory search but not by task switching.

Recent studies suggest that timing and tasks involving executive control processes might require the same attentional resources. This should lead to interference when timing and executive tasks are executed concurrently. This study examined the interference between timing and task switching, an executive function. In 4 experiments, memory search and digit classification were performed successively in 4 conditions: search-search (search followed by search), search-digit, digit-search, and digit-digit. In a control reaction time (RT) condition, participants provided RT responses in each of the 2 tasks. In a time production condition, an RT response was provided to the first stimulus, but the response to the second stimulus, S2, was given only when participants judged that a previously presented target duration had elapsed. When responding to S2 required a switch, RTs to S2 were longer, but produced intervals were unaffected. These results show that memory search affects concurrent timing, but not task switching. Task switching seems therefore to be 1 executive function that does not interfer with timing.