Alzheimer's disease and Dementia

Biography

Biography: Marie Christine Le Bourdais

Abstract

The Dementia Community Investment (DCI) in Canada fund was designed to support projects on quality of life of persons living with dementia (PLWD) and their carers and decrease the stigma around dementia. The aim of the project What connects Us ~ Ce qui nous lie (2020-2023) was to expand to a number of shared activities and events to address stigma, with communitybased and arts-related organizations, at the intersection of dementia, aging and mental health. In this presentation, we will present the initial results on the effectiveness of six online community screening of short film featuring stories about living with neurocognitive disorder (NCD), followed by curated panel discussions with the film directors, arts/culture partners, policy makers and other stakeholders, on stigma and misperception, from a panellist perspective. The research team employed a mixed methods ethnographic approach to describe and measure the impact of the six films screening with pre/post-film and then later post-film and later post-discussion measures of semantic sentiment. All discussions were simultaneously interpreted, and based on open-ended qualitative questions that had been developed with panellists prior to the screening. The qualitative questions asked for one word/phrase responses to generate work clouds. Three researchers then assessed the words/phrases until agreement on positive or negative value was reached. Participating as a panellist in this project had an impact on the understanding of the intersection of cultural and arts-related events and the sharing of personal stories on the perception of PLWD and the stigma around it. For participants, there was a significant change in sentiment from negative to positive sentiment across all waves within and across the six screenings, with the most change occurring post-discussion. Films about living with NCD, and curated questions developed in collaboration with panellists and director of 1st person experiences can positively impact changes in sentiment about NCDs.