Social representations of caring for the bedridden elderly in Mexico City

Abstract

Due to epidemiological, demographic, socioeconomic and cultural changes in the Mexican population, there are a growing number of people who assume the role of caregivers; those who care for bedridden elderly people share diverse social representations of care, throughout the long trajectories of the chronic conditions affecting the people they serve. To analyze this process, we chose to use the perspective of critical medical anthropology, which has developed the study of social representations, so as to understand the social discourses, and the internalization thereof, with regard to the actors in the health-disease-care process. The objective of this work is to describe the social representations that caregivers construct when attending to the needs of bedridden elderly people. To this end, an ethnographic study was carried out, in which 11 informal caregivers (based in Mexico City) participated. The results show that informal caregivers construct their social representations of care, based on their interrelationships with family/neighborhood support networks. There are representations regarding the appointment of the caregiver; the motivations of the caring process, and the care roles where gender, generation and the values involved, as well as the socioeconomic conditions in which they live, play a fundamental role. The paper concludes on the theme of the importance of the sociocultural aspects, along with the complexity of the social representations regarding the care of the elderly bedridden.