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Abstract

Every year the Swedish police handle 25,000 reports on missing people. A majority of those gone missing come back home, without the need of outside assistance. For some, help is critical, and many don’t even know that they are missing. These people are persons with dementia and a large percentage of them go missing in Sweden´s largest city, Stockholm. Searching for a person with dementia in a sprawling city creates its own set of obstacles and requires a certain skill from the police in order to execute assistance.

The result of the study is based on interviews with experienced police officers from the 

Stockholm police force and their experience of searching for missing persons with dementia in an urban environment. The results of this study indicate that the Managing Search Operations, or “EFP-metoden” in Swedish, is a search method that works when the police search for a person with dementia in an urban environment. Why the method works can`t be explained and the reason is that there is lack of research and verified statistics in the research area of persons gone missing.  This indicates that there is a need of more research studies about people gone missing for the Swedish “EFP-metoden” to develop. 

This study is done as a quality interview study and the study has been done to develop new information to the study of missing people who have dementia and to give suggestions to future research data in this field of study.