Som drabbad av en orkan - Åbo Akademi

in what is unspoken. Even through other people - either the professional caregivers or other
patients - the relatives obtain indirect access to a companionship including themselves and
their next of kin. Alienation and frustration might on the contrary lead to hatred which is
turned towards those who hurt them, man or God.
This study describes the conditions shaping the relatives´ existence when a next of kin is
stricken with dementia and is in need of caring and the relatives´ experience in their contact
with caring in this context. This study also examines suffering, care and health according to
the relatives’ experience and the meaning they ascribe to these phenomena. The knowledge
gained thereby might help us understand their actual situation. This is important as previous
research describes how little the professional caregivers understand the relatives´ lived
conditions, needs and desires.
What does it mean to be a relative of someone who is stricken with dementia? The answer
given in a new gestalt reflects an existence that might be characterized as being hit by an
existential hurricane, which changes the lives involved inexorably. When will care acquire
the meaning of ‘good care’ in the relatives’ view? The answer given is: in an atmosphere of
solidarity, within the compass of mutual agreement. How does the relatives’ actual situation
affect their own health? The answer given is: either they suffer or their suffering is alleviated
depending on the absence or presence of a professional caregiver.
These answers offer readers a chance to judge the validity, reliability and inter-subjectiveness
of this study in terms of credibility and utility. The answers to the questions in this study are
subsumed under the systematic research of caring science as well as clinical caring science
since it has revealed a deeper coherence of meaning.
The knowledge submitted by this thesis might be considered of value to the caring sciences
as well as to family care and the caring for relatives when their next of kin is suffering from
some serious illness. To understand the relatives´ needs and to understand them in an
ontological context is essential for caring in its deepest meaning. When becoming hopeful as
a sensation of something conceivable emanates from suffering, the professional caregivers´
knowledge of caring, their will and their ability to tend, play and learn is of vital importance.
This touches the relatives´ potential for health. Thus this study might be considered to
correspond to a description of when caring acquires the meaning of good care to the relatives
and how their own health is reflected in the actual situation.
A methodology discussion
The data were interpreted on an existential level to make it possible to understand the
relatives´ lived conditions. Aiming to adopt a new approach to deepen the understanding of
the relatives´ experiences, a theory of caring based on humanistic grounds was chosen as a
frame for interpretation
A new description of the relatives’ conditions has been made and a new gestalt has been
shaped and thereto a new meaning of structure. This has been done through the dialectical
pendulum which characterizes the hermeneutical process, symbolically described as a spiral,
where every interpretation or understanding comprises parts of the totality and vice-versa. It
is the dialectic between the parts and the totality (statements related to the experienced world
) which leads to preconceptions – interpretation, new understanding - which emanate from
this approach. The various parts of the study are comprehensible when related to its totality
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