Autobiographical narratives in the elderly with neurocognitive disorder: an integrative literature review

ABSTRACT

Objective:

to carry out an integrative review of the literature on autobiographical narratives as a discursive activity in the older adult with neurocognitive disorder.

Methods:

a descriptive study that covered the Scopus, SciELO, PubMed, and Science Direct databases, from 2009 to 2019, using the keywords autobiographical, narrative, dementia, reminiscence, the elderly, and the Boolean operator. A narrative synthesis was adopted considering the characteristics of the clinical, and methodological heterogeneity of the studies.

Results:

the results included 3 articles published between 2012 and 2018, in the English language, from the United Kingdom, Brazil, and Argentina, which highlighted the autobiographical narratives. Although in a strict sense they did not present the narrative as a specific objective of the autobiographical study, they did provide interesting and related data which justified their inclusion.

Conclusion:

it is observed that the literature researched presents a limited number of articles, adressing the autobiographical narrative as a discursive activity in the elderly with neurocognitive disorder.

Keywords:
Autobiography; Narration; Dementia; Mental Recall; Aged