Embracing Dementia

Tells the author's personal journey through her husband's vascular dementia, providing help and hope for anyone affected by Alzheimer's and dementia diseases. Contains "In A Nutshell" practical guide for caregivers with limited time. Candidly discusses emotional, physical, and spiritual issues affecting the patient and relationships, including matters of intimacy, grief, faith, and dying. For families, caregivers, pastors, counselors.

Has your loved one been diagnosed with dementia? Do you suspect your loved one has dementia? A dementia diagnosis can be frightening and have you questioning your abilities to provide care. Embracing Dementia is a care guide to provide you with the tools to better understand dementia and the knowledge to know how to help. Based on real-life stories, Embracing Dementia guides you through the disease process with proven methods. This book will do the following: Provide education about dementia using relatable descriptions Teach the importance of a specific diagnosis and how to get one Instruct on the best techniques to address dementia-related issues, such as behavioral disturbance, continued driving, and medical problems Guide you through changes in the disease process and how to address the new challenges that come along with the decline from diagnosis to end of life Inspire and recommend resources to help you along this journey Order now and start Embracing Dementia today.

Meaningful touch is an essential part of truly person-centred dementia care, yet its value is often viewed as secondary to its perceived risks. This book restores trust in the power of touch, demonstrating the vital role it plays in supporting personhood, relationships and wellbeing, and challenging the barriers preventing staff from using touch in meaningful ways. Using many examples from practice, Luke Tanner demonstrates that touch and other forms of non-verbal communication are essential for 'being with' and not just 'doing to' people living with a dementia, and explains how and when to use touch effectively in everyday interactions, and in all stages of dementia. He places touch in the context of consent and safeguarding, whilst emphasising the need for positive attitudes to touch to be at the heart of care cultures. Offering perspectives, ideas, training exercises and culture change actions to maximise the benefits of touch in dementia care settings, this practical guide will enable practitioners to reflect on their own use of touch and develop the knowledge, skills and confidence to place meaningful touch at the heart of their work.

SELF IMPROVEMENT Learn how to see the joy and love as we assist people living with dementia and Alzheimer’s disease Dementia and Alzheimer’s disease is a devastating diagnosis. How can we, as caregivers, walk through this journey, assisting our loved ones to live life fully? There is a rainbow in the storm, and we, the caregivers, are often the ones that need to be able to look upward. The person with dementia is still the same person that you know; yet he or she is different and unable at times to comprehend what is happening. How can we prepare and embrace these individuals as they travel this road? The frequency of this disease is increasing and now is the time to view it as we do other diseases. People can live fulfilling lives with this disability. We, the caregivers, are the solution as we learn to embrace and enjoy the journey. There is no easy route, and there will be setbacks and crises. I offer this book as simply another tool to assist you along the way. * Discover how you can make a difference through acceptance and gratitude. * Understand the changes that are taking place. * Learn how to take care of yourself. * Find the gifts along the journey.

This is Dementia: Disrupting the Decline seeks to dispel the myths surrounding dementia. It invites you to take a journey to explore the misconceptions, stereotypes, and various perspectives surrounding this devastating disorder. This journey is an interactive one that requires you to engage. It asks you to bring, and challenge, your own perspectives and understandings of what dementia is. The reality is that dementia in and of itself is not a disease. At its core, dementia is accelerated aging of the brain. In other words, the brain is on a faster trajectory toward death when compared to the body. This understanding of dementia is important as it opens the possibility of disrupting, even preventing, this trajectory. This is Dementia offers crucial insights into how dementia impacts our brains and its ability to function. It provides information on the early often imperceptible changes, referred to as Mild Cognitive Impairment (MCI), that can begin as early as 30 or 40 years old. It dispels the myths that dementia is an inevitable part of aging and that it is not treatable. It offers five steps -- Awareness, Acceptance, Action, Allowance, and Attitude -- to guide your understanding of dementia and prepare you for your own diagnosis or that of someone close to us. Regardless of if you or a loved one have been diagnosed with dementia or not, This is Dementia provides a road map to empower you to slow, maybe even stop, the seemingly relentless march of this debilitating, "take-everything-from-you" disorder.

Caring for a loved one who is mentally and physically slipping away over time is one of the hardest things to do, and yet with a family-based approach¿ caregiver burnout can be a thing of the past.In many more primitive cultures, the elderly get cared for by the wider community, and by the whole family group. They are revered as sources of wisdom and knowledge, as well as a useful link to the past and the family history.But in the Western, modern-day culture, we are programmed to be more self-reliant, independent, and we are all way too isolated.It's time to bring back a more community and family-based approach to carrying what is, after all, a family problem. The issue of a loved one who needs extra care and support is not for one person to carry alone.But how do we involve our wider families?

Caring for terminally ill patients and their families is challenging. Patients with life limiting illness require the skills of many professionals but also the support of their community. While most clinicians are comfortable in assessing a broad range of physical problems, it is often the psychosocial issues that prove the most complex. These issues range from psychosocial assessment to the treatment and care of patients with life limiting illnesses. Evaluating emotional, social and spiritual needs, in particular, requires excellent teamwork. This fully-updated and expanded new edition takes a comprehensive look at current practice and provision of psychosocial support as applied to a range of palliative care patients. A number of important areas are covered including community approaches of psychosocial care, neonatal palliative care, the provision of psychosocial care to families, the role of volunteers in supporting palliative care professionals, and the needs of the frail elderly, marginalised patients, and those with dementia. Including multiple case study examples, this highly practical text examines current literature and evidence to demonstrate the best research-based practice in psychosocial care. It is an essential resource for professionals working within hospitals and communities in the fields of medicine, nursing, social work, chaplaincy, counselling, primary care, and mental health.