Sentiment d’auto-efficacité chez la personne âgée et gestion des risques de démence

Abstract

This study is entitled: “Self-efficacy in the elderly and management of the risk of dementia”. By considering the literature on dementia and specifically on aging and in this case the elderly, we find that the issue of dementia in Africa and especially in Cameroon has not been widely addressed. The African authors who have approached this state have done so in a purely epidemiological and neurological sense, all the same raising the expression of suffering that dementia takes on in the elderly (Kuate-Tegueu et al., 2016, Massi, Aretoutap et al (2020), Touré Kamadore (2007), etc.). Faced with this multifactorial disease where genetic and environmental factors intertwine, many of the subject's cognitive abilities are affected, thus plunging the elderly person into a situation of disability. It is believed that the development of a sense of self-efficacy by the elderly person helps to prevent the risk of dementia. Indeed, the behavior of the elderly person would be "planned" according to his perceptions and his intention to behave in the face of his state of health (Ajzen, 1991). Thus, the problem posed by this study is that of managing the risk of dementia in the elderly. This problem admits as a research question: how the feeling of self-efficacy in the elderly helps to prevent the risk of dementia? Based on the theory of reasoned action (TAR) developed by Fishbein and Ajzen (1975), we formulated the hypothesis that the feeling of self-efficacy in the elderly helps prevent the risk of dementia. From there, she set herself the goal of understanding how the feeling of self efficacy developed by the elderly is put to use in the prevention of the risk of dementia. To achieve this, we used the clinical method, more specifically the case study. The data was collected using semi-structured interviews with three elderly people from the Béthanie VIACAM centre. We used thematic content analysis to analyze the data. The results obtained show that the prevention of the risks of dementia is based not only on the belief in their abilities in the elderly person, but also on the power to act endowed to them by the entire community. Moreover, the feeling of self-efficacy improves the relationship of the elderly person to himself, the social bond of the latter intensifies and takes the form of benevolence and a protective factor. Keywords: reasoned action, sense of self-efficacy, dementia, risk management, elderly person.