title: Giving dementia a face? The portrayal of older people with dementia in German weekly news magazines between the years 2000 and 2009.
abstract: OBJECTIVE
  We investigated photographic depictions of older people with dementia in news magazines according to their frequency as well as observable characteristics of the characters.
  
  
  METHODS
  We examined all 2,604 photos appearing in articles identified using the key words "dementia" and "Alzheimer's" published in the 4 major German weekly news magazines between 2000 and 2009. According to the body text and/or the legend, 154 characters with dementia were identified. Trained judges rated the age and gender of each character as well as the emotional expression, physical functioning, physical surroundings, and social context of the characters.
  
  
  RESULTS
  Visual representations of characters with dementia linearly increased across time (both in terms of absolute and relative figures). Women were shown more often than men. Young-old and old-old characters were depicted equally often. Characters were mostly depicted as having positive emotions and good functional health. A large majority of characters were shown in individualized contexts and together with social partners. Only 2 social partners displayed negative emotions, and he/she was a "helper" in less than one third of cases.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  Despite the overall low frequency of photos of older people with dementia, dementia seems to have "acquired a face" across the past decade. Although our analysis revealed a heterogeneous portrayal of older people with dementia, "positive" representations clearly prevailed.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychological Ageing Research, Institute of Psychology, Network Aging Research, Heidelberg University, Germany. kessler@nar.uni-heidelberg.de
authors.forename: Eva-Marie
authors.initials: EM
authors.lastname: Kessler
authors.forename: Clemens
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Schwender
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D000369:Aged, 80 and over; D000375:Aging / Q000523:psychology*; D003704:Dementia / Q000523:psychology*; D005260:Female; D005858:Germany; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D010506:Periodicals as Topic / Q000639:trends*; D012938:Social Perception; D014796:Visual Perception / Q000502:physiology