How Dementia Affects Friendships (and What You Can About It)
Memory loss can be one of the first symptoms a person experiences with Alzheimer’s, and those living with Lewy body dementia may also become easily confused. These varied symptoms can make maintaining relationships more difficult, but friendships are no less important for people with dementia than for the rest of us. Maintaining relationships, however, especially among friends who are not pressured to continue involvement because of a new sense of duty over a person with dementia, can take work. This guide discusses how caregivers can help by educating willing visitors who want to be helpful but simply don’t know how to make a visit tolerable, let alone, meaningful.
- Communicate to the visitor, before the visit, about how important validating the person with dementia is. Validating means that you don’t argue with the person who has the disease. Instead, educate the visitor. Let them know that the person whom they are visiting lives is in a reality that is as true to him and the visitor is to her. This is why repeatedly correcting someone who has dementia will only cause aggravation. It doesn’t matter if the person with dementia says the visiting nurse…
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