Like so many dementia symptoms, aggression is often misunderstood, leading to inappropriate interventions. It is popular to portray people with dementia as angry and out of control, aggressive and unmanageable, frightening and dangerous. Extreme examples of aggression that lead to…
Tag: agitation
Catching some z’s
There are few things more closely associated with wellbeing than a good night’s sleep. It is something many of us take for granted until it is disturbed by the people or environment around us, or when those dreaded nights of…
Ending the ‘chemical cosh’
One of the things I feel most passionately about in dementia care is the inappropriate use of antipsychotic medications. For many years these have been commonplace when doctors, nurses and care professionals have sought to quell the symptoms of dementia…
Treat others as you would wish to be treated yourself
Ask most people caring for a loved one with dementia what they dread the most, and a common theme will probably be hospital admission. For so many reasons, hospitals and dementia patients are a combination that is fraught with problems,…
Singing from the same hymn sheet
Improving the quality of life for people with dementia, especially in the more advanced stages of the disease when they may have very limited communication or ability to do anything for themselves, is one of my biggest passions. Over the…
Continuity is key
Last week a story hit the headlines about how Jeanette Maitland’s husband Ken, who was living with dementia, had been given 106 different carers during the last year of his life. Mr Maitland, from Aberdeen, had been allocated two carers…
