Does participation in the Meeting Centre Support Programme change the stigma experienced by people with dementia

Introduction The Meeting Centre Support Programme (MCSP) is a community-based approach to support people living with dementia and their families. It was developed in the Netherlands and has been implemented in other European Countries (Italy, Poland and the UK) within the JPND-MEETINGDEM project. Aims To assess the relationship between background characteristics of people with dementia participating in MCSP, mood, quality of life (QoL) and experienced stigma, and to explore if and how the experienced stigma changed after 6 months of participation in MCSP. Methods A pretest (M1) post-test (M7) control group design with matched groups regarding severity of dementia was applied. In each country, a minimum of 25 participants using MCSP were compared with people with dementia receiving ‘usual care’. Data were collected with the Stigma Impact Scale, Cornell Scale for Depression in Dementia, Global Deterioration Scale and two QoL scales (QoL-AD u0026 DQoL). Differences in background characteristics were taken into account in the analyses. Results The preliminary analysis on 116 participants at baseline shows that the level of stigma was low to moderate. People felt more socially rejected in the UK than in Poland and Italy. The level of perceived stigmatization appeared negatively correlated with QoL areas and positively correlated with negative mood. Changes after 6 months will be presented. Conclusions It is expected that after 6 months people living with dementia participating in MCSP will experience less stigma, as in contrast with usual care MCSP promotes social integration of people with dementia and person-centered support.