Elders and mental capacity: Using a qualitative approach to examine views on independence and protection across the...

How do people in contemporary Balkans think about elders and mental capacity, a particular medical and legal concept?

Different interpretations and applications regarding elders' mental capacity are explored through in-depth semi-structured interviews and field notes of 28 Greeks, 27 Bulgarians and 10 Romanians of varying ages, all living in Northern Greece. This study attempts to shed some light on the perceptions of ageing, mental disease, civil capacities, family and state involvement across three nearby nations. Interpretative phenomenological analysis (IPA), an approach to psychological qualitative research that aims to offer insights into how a given person, in a given context, makes sense of a given phenomenon was used for the first time applied to this topic.

Four areas for focus were formed, each relating to the elders and the aging process and presenting the associated themes drawn from the participants' accounts: 1) Discovering the altered-self of the elder, family and society, 2) General experience with old age and capacities in everyday life, 3) Ways of thinking and acting towards old age and capacity issues, and 4) Feelings and comparison thoughts towards old age and capacity issues. Education, occupation, life experience, and especially religious beliefs were all found to be involved in the ways that people from three cultural groups understand the concept of mental capacity and incapacity of elders in their everyday life. A main finding is that the more educated Bulgarians and Romanians tend to speak more easily and to be more positive towards the social construct of aging, while Greeks regardless of their gender, education, religious beliefs, and financial status, tend to consider in their narratives old age as equal to loss of mental capacity, which equals to loss of autonomy and total dependency on others. The process of old age for the group of Greeks begins with retirement which is perceived to reflect withdrawal from social life. This is primarily related to behaviors from individuals and society that result to deprivation of freedom.

The similarities and differences among these three ethnic groups are discussed, which according to the interviewees discourse reveal peculiar cultural understandings about subordinate themes such as power and its relationship to the self and superordinate themes on emotional control, choice, and individualism.