"It's like crystal gazing": The Lived Experience of Anticipating End-of-Life Choices in Older Adults and Their Close Ones.

Background And Objectives: Nowadays people increasingly try to take control over the end of their lives by anticipating end-of-life choices. Explication of these choices is encouraged using advance care planning (ACP). We aim to deepen our understanding of how choice-making processes are lived in real life, exploring the experience of community-dwelling older adults and their close ones over time.

Questioning the value of present life: The lived experience of older people who see no future for themselves.

Objectives: To describe the lived experience of older people who see no future for oneself in the context of aging and the possible development of a wish to die.

Methods: Data were collected from 34 interviews with people of 55-92 years. A phenomenological hermeneutical analysis was performed using crafted stories as an analytical device.

Lifelong versus not lifelong death wishes in older adults without severe illness: a cross-sectional survey.

Background: Some older adults with a persistent death wish without being severely ill report having had a death wish their whole lives (lifelong persistent death wish; L-PDW). Differentiating them from older adults without severe illness who developed a death wish later in life (persistent death wish, not lifelong; NL-PDW) can be relevant for the provision of adequate help and support. This study aims to gain insight into the characteristics, experiences, and needs of older adults with a L-PDW versus older adults with a NL-PDW and into the nature of their death wishes.

'I want to die on my own terms': Dominant interpretative repertoires of 'a good death' in old age in Dutch newspapers.

Rationale: There is a paucity of empirical studies exploring how death and dying in old age are actually represented and debated within the Dutch society.

Objective: This study examines the discourse used in Dutch newspapers on the good death and dignified dying. It analyses how different types of social actions and positions are construed, thereby describing how death and dying in old age are portrayed in newspaper media.

Turning grey is not a black-and-white experience: A phenomenological study on the lived experience of old age among Dutch Franciscan friars.

The lack of constructive cultural narratives of old age impedes older people from giving meaning to any difficult circumstances related to aging in which they might find themselves. In this study, we attempted to shed a different light on experiences of meaning in older age to contribute to sources for constructive counter narratives by gaining insight into (the experience of) meaning in old age of Dutch Franciscan friars. The research was a phenomenological in-depth interview study among twelve friars (mean age 80.

[Persons aged 75 and above who have a death wish while not being seriously ill: who are these people?].

Objective: To provide insight into the prevalence of persistent death wishes without being severely ill among Dutch older persons aged 75 and above; to describe the characteristics and circumstances of this group; to improve knowledge on the nature of their death wishes.

Design: Cross-sectional study.

Method: In 2019 we conducted a large survey among a representative sample of 32,477 Dutch citizens aged 55 and above from the TNS-NIPObase.

Still ready to give up on life? A longitudinal phenomenological study into wishes to die among older adults.

Rationale: There is a paucity of empirical studies exploring wishes to die (WTD) in older adults without a life-threatening disease or psychiatric disorder, especially on how these WTD evolve over time.

Objective: This study aims to deepen our understanding of living with a WTD by elucidating multifaceted trajectories of death wishes in older adults without a life-threatening disease or psychiatric disorder.

Methods: Interviews were conducted between 2013 and 2019 with Dutch men and women aged 70 and older who expressed a WTD (preferably at a self-chosen moment).

Continuing to Participate in the Dance of Life as Oneself: The Lived Experience of Meaning in Life for Older Adults With Alzheimer's Disease.

Background And Objectives: Meaning in life is an important aspect of positive psychological functioning for older adults. Limited work suggests the relevance of the experience of meaning for people with dementia, but research into this experience from their personal perspective is lacking. The current study provides an in-depth investigation of the lived experience of meaning in life for older adults with Alzheimer's disease.

'The eyes of others' are what really matters: The experience of living with dementia from an insider perspective.

Introduction: This Dutch study is a qualitative interview study. It aims to contribute to our understanding of the day-to-day experiences by providing an idiographic description of what it means existentially to be in the world as a person affected by a form of dementia, taking into account the contextual nature of these embodied experiences.

Methods: We used a combination of narrative accounts of people from dementia.

The social-political challenges behind the wish to die in older people who consider their lives to be completed and no longer worth living.

In the Netherlands, physician-assisted dying has been legalized since 2002. Currently, an increasing number of Dutch citizens are in favour of a more relaxed interpretation of the law. Based on an ethos of self-determination and autonomy, there is a strong political lobby for the legal right to assisted dying when life is considered to be completed and no longer worth living.

Entangled in uncertainty: The experience of living with dementia from the perspective of family caregivers.

Introduction: Too often dementia care is still fragmented and unresponsive to the needs of people living with dementia and their family caregivers. To develop effective health care services, in-depth insight into the experiences of family caregivers is a prerequisite.

Methods: This Dutch study is a qualitative interview study.

A Captive, a Wreck, a Piece of Dirt: Aging Anxieties Embodied in Older People With a Death Wish.

The aims of this present study were to explore the use and meaning of metaphors and images about aging in older people with a death wish and to elucidate what these metaphors and images tell us about their self-understanding and imagined feared future. Twenty-five in-depth interviews with Dutch older people with a death wish (median 82 years) were analyzed by making use of a phenomenological-hermeneutical metaphor analysis approach. We found 10 central metaphorical concepts: (a) struggle, (b) victimhood, (c) void, (d) stagnation, (e) captivity, (f) breakdown, (g) redundancy, (h) subhumanization, (i) burden, and (j) childhood.

Researching Health Care as a Meaningful Practice: Toward a Nondualistic View on Evidence for Qualitative Research.

Being able to describe how research findings become evidence is crucial in providing a justification for all kinds of research findings. However, qualitative researchers in health care, including those who conduct phenomenological research, are usually fairly modest when it comes qualifying their research findings as such. We advocate a view of evidence for phenomenological research, an approach that is rooted in philosophy of science, including perspectives of ontology, epistemology, and methodology.

[The diagnostic disclosure of dementia: an ethnographic exploration].

Giving adequate diagnostic information is considered to be fundamental in dementia care. An important question is how the diagnostic disclosure in dementia actually takes place. The aim of this explorative ethnographic study was therefore to provide insight into the disclosure practice of medical specialists.

Caught between intending and doing: older people ideating on a self-chosen death.

Objectives: The aim of this paper is to provide insight into what it means to live with the intention to end life at a self-chosen moment from an insider perspective.

Setting: Participants who lived independent or semidependent throughout the Netherlands.

Participants: 25 Dutch older citizens (mean age of 82 years) participated.

Till Death Do Us Part: The Lived Experience of an Elderly Couple Who Chose to End Their Lives by Spousal Self-euthanasia.

Purpose: This article provides the first qualitative account of spousal self-euthanasia in older people, a previously unexplored phenomenon. It investigates the lived experience of a Dutch elderly couple who strongly wished-and chose-to die together at a self-directed moment, despite not suffering from a life-threatening disease or severe depression. It describes their subjective experiences and considerations prior to their self-chosen death.