Dementia

This video focuses on developing dementia care skills. Designed to reflect the intricacies of providing care in the home, this title explores the ways in which domiciliary care workers can adapt everyday routines and practices to support a person with dementia.

Telephone-mediated group programs are an important but under-utilized medium for reaching frail or disabled older persons' family carers who are in need of support. The primary purpose and style of group programs can range across a broad spectrum–encompassing educational, supportive and therapeutic types. Gerontological social workers are the members of the multidisciplinary care team whose training, experience and supervision makes them most suitable for facilitating this broad range of group types.

Although the potential of using location information to support people with dementia has been recognised, the uptake of location technology in this area has been limited compared with the uptake of standard Telecare techniques. The paper examines the reasons for this and describes a project, EASE (Extended Active Support Environment) which was commissioned by NHS South as part of their SBRI for Dementia programme, to develop a system which would address these issues and make location technologies a practical tool to support people with more advanced dementia. 

As more people are living longer this growing number of older people means an increase in mental health problems. Twenty-five per cent of people over 85 develop dementia and between ten and sixteen per cent of those over 65 develop clinical depression. In addition, people who developed severe and enduring mental health problems such as schizophrenia when young are now growing older (Audit Commission, 2000). Most people with dementia live in the community. About half are cared for at home by a family carer, usually a spouse or adult child (Keady & Nolan, 1995).

Objective. Treatment decisions in life threatening situations (TD) are poorly studied in people with dementia.

Method. The carers of people with dementia were asked four TD questions, pertaining to cardiac resuscitation, intravenous fluids, oral antibiotics and intravenous antibiotics. The impact of key variables (age, dementia severity, psychiatric co-morbidity, physical illness, family relationship of carer) on TD were evaluated.

BACKGROUND: Informal caregivers of people with dementia are challenged in managing the consequences of dementia in daily life. The objective of this meta-review was to synthesize evidence from previous systematic reviews about professional self-management support interventions for this group.

Objectives: There has been a global push towards the earlier diagnosis of dementia, but there is little understanding of the transitions along the assessment and diagnostic pathway from the perspective of people affected by memory problems, cognitive impairment and early dementia. This study explores the experience of the assessment and diagnostic pathway for people with cognitive impairment and their family carers.

The economic and social burden of dementia on society is the value of all the resources used to prevent, diagnose, treat, and generally cope with the illness. This article assess the overall resource implications of dementia in Ireland. Six main areas are covered in the cost analysis as follows: mortality and life years lost, in-patient acute care, in-patient psychiatric care, residential long-stay care, family care, and primary and social care in the community.