Abstract
Dementia is often narrated as a story of loss, in which social connectedness among people living with dementia (PLWD) is assumed to decline in step with cognitive impairment. This three paper dissertation interrogates that assumption, examining how social connectedness is conceptualized, how it actually unfolds over time, and how it is lived and sustained in daily life. Paper 1 presents a scoping review of 28 empirical studies on social connectedness among older PLWD, finding considerable heterogeneity in how dementia was identified, a persistent conceptual split between social integration and social relationship with limited theoretical grounding, a differential focus by care setting (long-term care versus community), and heightened vulnerability of social connectedness to contextual disruption, as illustrated by the COVID-19 pandemic. Paper 2 uses the National Health and Aging Trends Study (NHATS) and latent growth curve analysis to model trajectories of social connectedness structure, quality, and function among 357 community-dwelling older adults with incident dementia. Three heterogeneous trajectory classes emerged, challenging a uniform, impairment-led narrative of decline and showing that sociodemographic and contextual factors, rather than cognitive status alone, differentiate how social connectedness evolves after diagnosis. Paper 3 turns to a first person, relationally embedded account of the author's father's experience of living with dementia, tracing how continuity of relationships, caregiver interpretation, and familiar environments sustained his agency and personhood, and proposing that dementia policy and practice attend to relational infrastructure alongside biomedical innovation. Taken together, the three papers suggest that social connectedness among PLWD is not a fixed casualty of cognitive decline but a heterogeneous, contextually contingent, and actively sustained process, one that dementia research, practice, and policy should be equipped to recognize, measure, and support across the course of the condition.
Committee Chair
Vanessa Fabbre
Committee Members
Eunsun Kwon; Nancy Morrow-Howell; Sojung Park; Takashi Amano
Degree
Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)
Author's Department
Social Work
Document Type
Dissertation
Date of Award
8-1-2026
Language
English (en)
DOI
https://doi.org/10.7936/yxnv-t325
Recommended Citation
Park, Soobin, "Social Connectedness among Older People Living with Dementia" (2026). Brown School Graduate Student Theses and Dissertations. 63.
The definitive version is available at https://doi.org/10.7936/yxnv-t325