Abstract:
A diagnosis of Mild Cognitive Impairment (MCI) can result in ambiguity and may
threaten an individual’s quality of life (QoL), well-being and life satisfaction. As the population
ages, more people will be living with MCI. Given the lack of treatment options, it has become
important to answer the question of how to “live well” with the condition. We propose that
personal and social identity may play an important role alongside social factors such as social
engagement and loneliness in the ability of individuals to live well with MCI. To explore this
hypothesised relationship, we investigated these constructs in 33 individuals with MCI as well as
19 cognitive normal matched controls. The results indicated that there was no significant
reduction in living well indicators in MCI compared to the control group. There was also no
evidence of impaired social identity or quantity of social engagement in this group. However, a
significant reduction was found in the quality and quantity of friend relationships for the MCI
group compared to the control group. Personal identity measures were found to predict living
well indicators for both groups but with different aspects of identity influential for each of the
groups. Social loneliness was found to be a consistent key predictor of living well indicators in
the MCI group, along with measures of social identity and quality and quantity of social
engagement. These relationships were not seen as clearly in the control group, with emotional
loneliness a more critical predictor for this group. This signals the importance of mitigating
social loneliness in particular, alongside the maintenance of personal and social identity, and
quality social engagement for living well with MCI.