Does the Meeting Centre Support Programme decrease the experience of stigmatisation among people with cognitive deficits?

Abstract

Objectives

This is the first study to focus on the role and impact of a psychosocial intervention, the Meeting Centre Support Programme (MCSP), for people living with dementia and mild cognitive impairment (MCI) on the experience of stigmatisation across three different European countries.

Method

A pre/post-test control group study design compared outcomes for 114 people with dementia (n=74) and MCI (n=40) in Italy, Poland and the UK who received either the MCSP or usual care (UC). The ‘Stigma Impact Scale, neurological disease’ (SIS) was administered at two points in time, 6 months apart. The Global Deterioration Scale (GDS) was used to assess the level of cognitive impairment.

Results

Although statistical analysis did not show any significant differences between MCSP and UC at pre/post-test for the 3 countries combined, there were significant results for individual countries. In Italy, the level of SIS was significantly lower (p=0.02) in the MCSP group following the intervention. The level of Social Isolation increased significantly (p=0.05) in the UC group at follow-up in Poland. The level of Social Rejection was significantly higher (p=0.03) over time for UK participants receiving MCSP compared to UC.

Conclusion

The experience of stigma by people living with dementia and MCI is complex and there may be different country specific contexts and mechanisms. The results do not enable us to confirm or disconfirm the impact of a social support programme, such as MCSP, on this experience. Difficulties in directly measuring the level of stigma in this group also requires further research.

Keywords:

• Stigma
• aging
• dementia
• social support
• attitude

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to highly appreciate the effort in collecting data by Mateusz Babicki and Katarzyna Osyra among people with dementia in Poland.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Correction Statement

This article has been republished with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Additional information

Funding

The work was supported by the framework of research aimed at promoting young scientists, funded by the Ministry of Science and Higher Education, Poland under the grant number STM.C230.16.020. The MeetingDem project was supported by the following funding organisations under the aegis of Joint Programme - Neurodegenerative Disease Research (JPND_HC-559-018), The Netherlands: ZonMw under grant number: 733051002, Italy: Ministero dell'Istruzione, dell'Universita' e della Ricerca (MIUR) (Ministry of Education, University and Research) under grant number: CUP: B32I14000470001 and Ministero della Salute - Codice Progetto (Ministry of Health) under grant number RRC-2013-2353248, Poland: Narodowe Centrum Badań i Rozwoju (National Centre for Research and Development) under grant number: DZP/1/JPND-II/2014, The United Kingdom: Economic and Social Research Council under grant number: ES/L00920X/1.