Narrative Medicine, Dementia, and Alzheimer's Disease: A Scoping Review.

Background/

Objectives

In recent years, Narrative Medicine (NM) has gained prominence in the context of neurodegenerative diseases, such as dementia, offering tools to understand the subjective experience of illness and to improve the care relationship.

Methods

This scoping review, conducted following the PRISMA guidelines, analyzed the scientific literature from PubMed, PsycInfo, Web of Science, and Medline, encompassing 10 contributions focused on NM and patients with dementia or Alzheimer's disease.

Results

The analysis identified three main themes: 1) narrative, memory, and personal identity, highlighting the role of narrative in preserving a sense of self; 2) personalization of care, oriented towards person-centeredness; 3) the use of narrative in a formative and reflective function as a tool to promote empathy, clinical awareness, and observation skills in the training of health professionals.

Conclusions

NM confirms itself as a relational and reflexive paradigm, capable of humanizing care and promoting therapeutic pathways that are more inclusive and sensitive to the patient's subjectivity.