{"title":"Dementia, a Polypharmaceutical Phenomenon: The Intimate Combinations of Dementia Drugs in Brazil.","authors":"Cíntia Engel","doi":"10.1007/s11013-022-09793-2","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>It is commonplace to state that dementia is a complex condition. Such complexity involves the limits between pathological and normal aging, diagnosis with no simple organic causation, and the use of psychiatric medication that does not cure but generates hope to alleviate symptoms such as forgetfulness and delirium. Based on an ethnography of one year and a half (2017-2018) in a Brazilian metropolis, within a Public Geriatric center and the households of three families, I argue that dementia, more than a complex condition, is a generator of drug complexity. Following Stefan Ecks' reflections on multimorbidity and polyiatrogenesis and Karen Barad's understanding of intra-action, I discuss the polypharmacy present in most cases of dementia that I have known. Considering the complicated relations of medications with themselves and with time and places, I conclude that dementia should be seen a polypharmaceutical phenomenon.</p>","PeriodicalId":47634,"journal":{"name":"Culture Medicine and Psychiatry","volume":"47 3","pages":"814-833"},"PeriodicalIF":1.5000,"publicationDate":"2023-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Culture Medicine and Psychiatry","FirstCategoryId":"3","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1007/s11013-022-09793-2","RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"医学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q2","JCRName":"ANTHROPOLOGY","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
It is commonplace to state that dementia is a complex condition. Such complexity involves the limits between pathological and normal aging, diagnosis with no simple organic causation, and the use of psychiatric medication that does not cure but generates hope to alleviate symptoms such as forgetfulness and delirium. Based on an ethnography of one year and a half (2017-2018) in a Brazilian metropolis, within a Public Geriatric center and the households of three families, I argue that dementia, more than a complex condition, is a generator of drug complexity. Following Stefan Ecks' reflections on multimorbidity and polyiatrogenesis and Karen Barad's understanding of intra-action, I discuss the polypharmacy present in most cases of dementia that I have known. Considering the complicated relations of medications with themselves and with time and places, I conclude that dementia should be seen a polypharmaceutical phenomenon.
期刊介绍：
Culture, Medicine, and Psychiatry is an international and interdisciplinary forum for the publication of work in three interrelated fields: medical and psychiatric anthropology, cross-cultural psychiatry, and related cross-societal and clinical epidemiological studies. The journal publishes original research, and theoretical papers based on original research, on all subjects in each of these fields. Interdisciplinary work which bridges anthropological and medical perspectives and methods which are clinically relevant are particularly welcome, as is research on the cultural context of normative and deviant behavior, including the anthropological, epidemiological and clinical aspects of the subject. Culture, Medicine, and Psychiatry also fosters systematic and wide-ranging examinations of the significance of culture in health care, including comparisons of how the concept of culture is operationalized in anthropological and medical disciplines. With the increasing emphasis on the cultural diversity of society, which finds its reflection in many facets of our day to day life, including health care, Culture, Medicine, and Psychiatry is required reading in anthropology, psychiatry and general health care libraries.
求助内容：
应助结果提醒方式：
京公网安备 11010802042870号
