PHASE 1: YOUNG-ONSET DEMENTIA
Relevance from Previous Part
To let my target audience be more related to my topic, I’ve developed an ideation of a young adult diagnosed with young-onset dementia who wrote a journal to record his/her process of the progression. It was designated to let my target audience to feel the feelings of having dementia from someone who was around their age, to create empathy for the patient and to raise the awareness from it. Besides, it also designated to “showcase” the effect of dementia progression on an individual, the fact that dementia is unavoidable and uncontrollable where it takes everything from you before you lose yourself gradually.
PHASE 2: FTD STAGES
Frontotemporal Dementia (FTD)
Frontotemporal dementia is caused by damage to the lobes at the front and/or sides of the brain. It is much more common in younger people with dementia than in older people. FTD is most often diagnosed in people between the ages of 45 and 65 or even younger. This is different to Alzheimer’s disease, vascular dementia and dementia with Lewy bodies, which all become more likely as people get older. There are three different types of FTD which cause different changes as the first symptoms which are behavioural variant FTD (changes in personality and behaviour), progressive non-fluent aphasia (changes in language production) and semantic dementia (changes in language comprehension). (Alzheimer's Society, n.d.)
PHASE 3: GRIEF THEORY
Kubler-Ross: 5 Stages of Grief
The theory of Kubler-Ross 5 Stages of Grief was applied while constructing the journal storyline of the patient. The 5 Stages of Grief is a theory developed by psychiatrist Elisabeth Kübler-Ross and the 5 stages are denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance. The grief cycle model is a useful perspective for understanding our own and other people’s emotional reaction to personal trauma and change, irrespective of the cause. The model was originally developed to explain the experience of those dying from terminal illness. It is now also widely used to explain the process of grief more broadly. From this model’s perspective, it is important to note that grief is not a linear process. Grief is considered to be fluid and as a result it is believed that most people do not progress through the stages of this model in an orderly manner (Baxter & Diehl, 1998).
PHASE 4: SENSE OF NOSTALGIA
Nostalgia
Nostalgia arises from tender and yearnful reflection on meaningful life events or important persons from one’s past. The core components of nostalgia are self-reflection, autobiographical memory, emotional regulation and reward. (Yang et al., 2022) It isn’t just a happy trip down memory lane — in fact, nostalgic reflection often involves both negative and positive emotional states. Critically, it tends to follow a redemptive sequence in which negative feelings such as longing and loss give way to positive feelings such as happiness, social connectedness, gratitude, and hope. In other words, nostalgia is bittersweet, but more sweet than bitter. (Routledge, 2021) Nostalgia is also used in marketing to connect the brand with positive concepts or ideas from past. The goal is to associate the brand with the feelings of comfort and security.
PHASE 5: THEME & CONCEPT IDEATION
Theme
From the research from part A and B, the greatest fear of the people from dementia was memory deterioration, where it wipes off parts of their memories and leaves a gap for them to be confused constantly. From the perspective of a carer/caregiver, they fear of the patient’s condition will gradually being worse and no longer remember the names of their love ones or memories which once happened before. From the perspective of a dementia patient, they fear of being in a state of amnesiac horror due to constant confusion from memory loss and they fear of losing themselves gradually as their body functions getting worse in the later stage while able to retained some awareness of their surroundings often perking up considerably from external stimulation. Hence, the theme of the envisioned information piece was decided as—Evidence of Existence.