What is it about?
This is a personal account based on diaries of a family dealing with the dementia of an ageing parent. It addresses the emotional and psychological stress of the growing illogicality of the loved one. It also raises issues associated with both informal and formal care provision.
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Why is it important?
Personal insights can often help both professionals and families understand and so deal with a deteriorating mental condition. While everyone's experience is unique there are common elements to the progression of dementia that can help anticipate the issues that need to be addressed. The personal expression of suffering helps others know they are not alone. Contemporary diary accounts can offer immediate human insights that counterbalance the necessarily more formal approach of professionals.
Perspectives
This article was about my mother-in-law and her vascular dementia. It was about the emotional pain it caused her, evidently, and the family increasingly. Strain is put on family relationships during times like this even though everyone was 'doing their best'. I left out a great deal of observation and thought from this article about family and about professional carers at all levels - and about the system. I didn't have the strength at the time to be too critical - once again even the professionals who made many mistakes were only doing their best with the resources they had available.
Dr Ron Iphofen
Independent
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: “What made you choose blue?” On becoming more “awkward”, Quality in Ageing and Older Adults, March 2014, Emerald,
DOI: 10.1108/qaoa-09-2013-0025.
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