The Development of a New Model of Relating to People with Dementia

2022 Fiscal Year Final Research Report

• Project/Area Number: 17K18596
• Research Category: Grant-in-Aid for Challenging Research (Exploratory)
• Allocation Type: Multi-year Fund
• Research Field: Sociology and related fields
• Research Institution: Otani University
• Principal Investigator: OH Kazumi 大谷大学, 真宗総合研究所, 研究員 (10780421)
• Project Period (FY): 2017-06-30 – 2023-03-31
• Keywords: 相互了解世界 / 日常生活世界 / 医療の場との接木

Outline of Final Research Achievements

Judging from my participant observation of S nursing home (tentative name), the XX-centered care need to be examined. I found S nursing home’s ‘commensurable’ group-care practice having advantage over the XX-centered care. In the ‘commensurable’ group-care practice, western modernized medical space and the ‘daily-life sphere’ are bridged to create a new better association between the health care specialists and care-receivers (even the people with apathy in dementia). Since the ‘commensurable’ group-care practice is favorably evaluated not in Japan but in the Netherlands, this study, by comparing the cases of the two countries, attempts to pursue and envisage a concrete pathway from the XX-centered care to the ‘commensurable’ group-care practice in a broader socio-political context including nation-wide strategy, positioning of its welfare, ideology on care, and the way of community sphere in which the ‘commensurable’ group-care practice has been operated.

Free Research Field

医療社会学および文化社会学

Academic Significance and Societal Importance of the Research Achievements

高齢社会において喫緊の課題である介護の問題、とりわけ認知症患者とどのように向き合うのかについて「相互了解世界」という新しいアプローチを理論化し、その実践の可能性を提示した。それにより従来の介護（論）において独占的地位を占めてきた主体を前提とした介護（論）では捕捉できなかった専門家・患者像ならびにその両者のより良いつき合いを描き出すことに成功した。それは、起点に患者の自己や自我の表現を想定しなくとも（一方的「関係性」）、専門家が患者の受容や理解に向かい、「わかり合える」双方向的関係を築くことができるアプローチであり、医療社会学の知の地平を拡げ、同時に、専門家の実践としても貢献するものである。