Tom Kitwood

Thomas Marris Kitwood (born 1937 in Boston , † November 1, 1998 in Bradford ) was an English social psychologist and psychogerontologist .

Life

The son of a local businessman Kitwood studied with a rugby - scholarship at King's College (Cambridge) and graduated in 1960 with a scientific bachelor from. He turned to Christian theology , completed church training and was ordained a priest in 1962 . He then took a job at a church boys' school in Lake Victoria, Uganda . There he met his future wife Jenny Cooper, the daughter of a missionary couple. A son was born in Uganda and a daughter later in England. The 1971 military coup and the subsequent dictatorship of Idi Amins forced the family to leave Uganda and return to Bradford. There Kitwood left the church career and took up a degree in psychology , social and educational science . In 1977 he did his doctorate with Rom Harré on the subject of Values ​​in Adolescent Life . In 1979 he became a lecturer at Bradford University , and in 1992 senior lecturer there for interdisciplinary human sciences . He began working as a psychotherapist and in 1980 published the book Disclosures to a Stranger: Adolescent Values ​​in an Advanced Industrial Society .

In 1985 he began to be interested in improving the management of demented people and working with Kathleen Bredin, through which Kitwood got access to the humanistic position of Carl R. Rogers . In 1998 he became Professor of Dementia Care and Psychogerontology at Bradford University. He lectured in the United States and expanded the dementia care research area at Bradford University into a separate department with undergraduate and postgraduate study opportunities.

plant

Between 1987 and 1995, Kitwood developed a new theory for dealing with demented people based on the person-centered approach and client-centered psychotherapy of the American psychologist and psychotherapist Carl R. Rogers in response to a social psychology and nursing culture shaped by the natural sciences and medicine . Together with Kathleen Bredin, he developed concepts for changing dementia care and, with Dementia Care Mapping, corresponding evaluation methods.

In view of his private as well as professional experience in dealing with people with dementia, Kitwood fundamentally questioned the “medical model” because of its implications and contradictions. In accordance with this paradigm, the neurological and medical view of dementia was in the foreground. Little attention was paid to the experience of people with dementia. Conspicuous behavior was interpreted as an incomprehensible expression of dementia. Care and support only had a palliative character. According to Kitwood, this perspective offered an unfavorable basis for dementia care, which easily triggers feelings of powerlessness and guilt in the caregivers without offering an alternative concept.

Kitwood contrasted this with a new paradigm that proceeded from the person concerned and their experience. In a new “dementia care culture”, the uniqueness of the person with dementia should be considered and appreciated. The focus of the concept is the relationship between interacting people. The focus is not on the healing of dementia aligned, but on well-being and previous success relationship. The concept includes the view that in the encounter with the person suffering from dementia, the carers also gain something and that not only the success of therapeutic efforts is important, but that the attentive encounter itself represents a value in itself.

As in client-centered psychotherapy, Kitwood also sees the person affected by dementia as an expert in their experience and focuses on the aspect of the encounter according to Martin Buber . His concepts of the "I-you relationship" and the "encounter" are considered the spiritual home of Carl Rogers, which is why his anthropology is also very similar to Buber's concept. There are points of contact with regard to the basic conditions formulated by Carl Rogers (authenticity, appreciation and empathy ) for a helpful person-to-person relationship. Kitwood also sees Buber's I-You encounter as the decisive starting point for understanding personhood. He emphasizes that in order to understand dementia it is important to "see personhood in terms of relationship."

reception

Kitwood's approach, along with those of Naomi Feil , Erwin Böhm and Cora van der Kooij, has significantly changed the care and handling of people with dementia and has found its way into the dementia guidelines in Germany. Other professional groups working in the care of people with dementia also refer to the Kitwood approach. B. occupational therapy , cultural geragogy , music geragogy , and music therapy , many residential and care facilities for people with dementia emphasize in their house brochures that they work according to the concepts of Kitwood and related approaches.

Fonts (selection)

• Dementia. The person-centered approach to dealing with confused people 6th edition Huber Verlag, Bern 2013 ISBN 978-3-45685-305-5
• Disclosures to a Stranger: Adolescent Values ​​in an Advanced Industrial Society , Law Book Co of Australasia 1980 ISBN 0-7100-0463-X
• Dementia reconsidered , Open University Press, 1997
• Mind that child! , Writers and Readers Publishing Cooperative, 1977
• Values ​​in adolescent life , University Microfilms, 1976

Web links

• Kitwood model and implementation in practice
• Article Karin Welling in Teaching Care 2004/5

Individual evidence

1. ^ Obituary Tom Kitwood
2. ↑ Tom Kitwood on Dementia. A Reader and Critical Commentary. Edited by Andrea Capstick, Clive Baldwin, Open University Press, 2007 ISBN 978-0-335-22271-1 . Available online in excerpts
3. ↑ School of Dementia Studies at Bradford University , accessed January 28, 2016
4. ↑ Wolfgang W. Keil: Historical development of the person-centered approach. (PDF; 181 kB) Danube University Krems, archived from the original on July 5, 2016 ; accessed on August 12, 2019 (original website no longer available). 
5. ↑ Dementia guidelines ( Memento of the original from March 18, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. 
6. ↑ Ulrike Ott: Occupational Therapy Examination Knowledge: Social Sciences. Thieme Verlag, Stuttgart 2012. ISBN 978-3-131-47491-9
7. ↑ cf. Website Dementia and Art
8. ↑ cf. Annotated bibliography on music geragogy
9. ↑ cf. Rosemarie Tüpker, Barbara Keller: Music therapy with old people (lexicon article as pdf)