How Can We Help
How Can We Help Dementia Care Together!
Offering Different Roles as Dementia Caregiver
I Know Someone with Dementia
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Friends
You have an important role to play for your friend, but we also need to take care of you. You may be wondering what you can do to deter dementia for yourself. You may be looking for focused strategies to help reduce your risk and allow you to be there for your friend but also for yourself and your family.
Family
As a family member of a dementia sufferer, having a forward-thinking and informed approach is essential. You need to kind, gentle, and understanding. How to react and respond varies greatly based on the specific circumstances of your family member. It is important to offer your care and communicate with your family member about their needs and what they would like, depending on the stage of their disease.
For Professionals
Give yourself the opportunity to educate yourself on this very common condition. We have educational materials and approaches that can help professionals from all backgrounds.
Physicians
Going to a physician with expertise in dementia care, a Dementia doctor, can be a very helpful step after the diagnosis of dementia. There are several different kinds of doctors that treat dementia and starting with a visit to a general physician will help get things started and possibly lead to a referral to a dementia specialist. Here at Deter Dementia, we want to help empower all physicians to improve their knowledge and understanding of this condition. We can use this improved understanding to better assist our patients and provide comprehensive care for those with cognitive impairment or dementia.
Nurses
Being a nurse and having a patient with dementia can be particularly challenging. It may not be clear how to respond to certain comments, repetitive questions, or misinterpretations of the world around them (hallucinations or delusions).
Personal Support Workers
Personal support workers help provide day to day care for these individuals from assistance with bathing, changing clothes, personal hygiene, and many other areas of care.
Others
As an expert in your field who has interactions with individuals with cognitive impairment or dementia, it is important to be aware of the many ways this can affect your profession.
For Employers
You may even have an employee that is showing some signs of increased forgetfulness, inattention, or other cognitive challenges. As a responsible employer, you need to ensure their cognitive health is in a state where they can continue to help your company in a safe and effective manner.
I Want To Deter Dementia
Our goal is to help deter dementia by providing customized solutions that go beyond generic advice that can be easily ignored and pushed to the back of our minds.
Understanding the Impact of Dementia
The first step to helping someone with dementia is to understand that dementia affects every person differently. It takes a different toll on each affected person’s mental health, has a unique outcome and impacts willpower differently. Therefore, it is encouraged for caregivers and close ones to take special care of a loved one suffering from dementia.
Many people suffer from memory loss in the earliest stages of dementia, though the symptoms can vary and include a variety of health issues such as hearing loss or sleep problems too. Here are some ways in which dementia can affect a person:
- Loss of confidence
- Self-esteem issues
- Loss of interest in hobbies
- Feeling isolated even in gathering
- Overthinking and depression
- Avoiding everyday chores like cooking, cleaning
- Sitting idle and alone
How Can We Help with Dementia?
Our role as a partner, helper, friend or family member for a person with dementia holds a lot of significance. With the right care and attention towards a dementia sufferer, the disease can be fought gracefully, and the progress of dementia can be slowed down.
| Practical | Social | Emotional | Physical |
|---|---|---|---|
| Offering them help with their daily routine by gently reminding them of tasks, setting alarms, reminders, using notes etc. | Encouraging them to sit with family, meet their friends and openly communicate about how they are feeling. Try to keep conversations open and explore things they have always enjoyed | Keeping the conversations on a lighter note, sharing jokes using humour and speaking positively about how recovery is possible with dementia. Watching comedy shows, television or listening to podcasts that focus on positivity. | Encourage them to adapt healthy lifestyle including daily exercise, light walks, jogging or sitting in nature. Join them on their daily workout routine to motivate them. |
What You Need to Know About Helping with Dementia
Many loved ones tend to take responsibility when someone close to them is suffering from dementia. This is highly beneficial for the person suffering from dementia, as attention and care from a close one are even more valuable in making the dementia treatment work more effectively. Special attention from a family member, a childhood friend, or a loyal partner can help work on memory skills and slow down the progress of the disease.
While a loved one can get very involved in caring for someone with dementia, it is important to remember that people with dementia can lead their lives normally in many ways. They might not like too much micromanaging, or not prefer a strict routine but rather be free occasionally. Therefore, we have listed down some things you should remember when taking care of someone with dementia:
- Many people with dementia can still manage a lot of their daily tasks; it is often better to let them live independently and keep an eye out for when they need help.
- They may still like to manage their money, expenses and bills themselves; it is healthier for someone with dementia to live independently too, ideally with some safeguards to prevent financial abuse or mismanagement.
- They may not want to follow a strict day-to-night routine every single day; it might get boring to live the same routine every single day – allow some flexibility for creativity from time to time.
The Key to Helping Dementia Sufferers: Dementia Care Specialist
Before jumping into modifying someone’s life who has recently been diagnosed with dementia, the key lies in educating yourself about the disease. Know that dementia isn’t a fatal disease but is rather a series of symptoms that impair a person’s ability to live normally. If not taken care of properly, dementia can get worse, otherwise the progression can be slowed down to a huge extent!
Here are some things one must do before helping a loved one with dementia:
- Learn more about dementia.
- Speak to professionals like doctors, neurologists for dementia, geriatricians, psychiatrists and dementia care nurses.
- Join a community with people who have loved ones suffering from dementia.
- Read, listen and watch videos about dementia.
- Learn how a person with dementia likes to be treated.
- And most importantly, speak to your loved one about how they would like to be cared for.
Taking Care of Someone with Dementia: Tips you Should Know
When diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease or any other types of dementia, the sufferer is undergoing lots of changes at a very fast pace. These internal changes, loss of control and modification in the brain’s ability to function normally invites a lot of anger and frustration. People who have such illnesses will eventually require more assistance with routine, everyday tasks. This could involve being dressed, groomed, and bathed. The person may find it distressing to require assistance with such private matters.
Here are some pointers to think about both at the beginning and as the illness may progress:
- Try to encourage a routine, mildly at first so they can easily adapt to this new change.
- Offer help at intervals rather than obsessing over details. Try to make them independent but watch out when they might use your help.
- Use calendars with colourful reminders, attractive alarm clocks and a diary so they can easily keep track of things and avoid frustration.
- Encourage them to be socially active and take them out for walks in the park, shopping mall, community center or to restaurants.
- Set a system to keep their medications organized and easy to track of.
- Help them dress or bathe while taking care of their privacy.
- Buy easy to wear shoes, clothes and jackets which do not frustrate them when getting dressed. Avoid laces and buttons if these are a challenge for them.
- Make sure to keep the house safe and dementia friendly so they don’t fall or trip over things.
- Speak calmly to them and give time for responses.
- Don’t judge them for forgetting basic tasks or forgetting someone close to them.
