What people with dementia can teach us all about humanity
By Dr Jemma Regan
In dementia, memories and identity fade. Emotions still exist.
Emotions are the key to our humanity and unlock the ability to experience joy.
From my work with people living with dementia, I have witnessed behaviours expressing the negative end of emotions: confusion, anger, rage, sadness, frustration, but I have also perceived pockets of great joy. Witnessing these people experiencing deep happiness, in the face of this debilitating, neurological illness, teaches us all lessons about how to bring more joy into our lives:
Live in the moment. Engage with the senses, engage with emotions, engage in the moment. Some people with dementia do not engage, they cannot communicate, yet they are uplifted. In dementia, sometimes the emotion is the only thing that exists. I’ve seen a lady who hadn’t spoken a word in 4 years began to sing along quietly when a music therapist visited the care home. She lit up. When was the last time you felt that kind of emotion? When did you pay enough attention to art, music, literature, poetry to allow it to absorb you fully in emotion? Our emotions make us human. Our emotions allow us to connect to our sense of self and to the world.
If you can’t be with the one you love, love the one you’re with. In the late stages of dementia, in the western world at least, many people live in a residential care facility. A spouse or partner may have passed away, children may be distant or non-existent. This could be very isolating. Residential care can get a sensationalised bad press, especially in the UK media. Yet these homes are often warm places, filled with intimate and touching moments. In dementia, when recognition has gone, the interaction between residents and care workers, holds more meaning. There are no expectations, no demands, no grudges held. Simple expressions of love and affection. On a recent visit to a residential home, a lady approached me with childlike innocence clutching a toy dog to her breast and proudly introduced me to her pet. We engaged in chatter as we stroked it. She could not be in my world, but I could be in hers. If only for a moment. I valued that. When do we have this kind of meaningful interaction with strangers, with people we have known a while, or even with our nearest and dearest?
Simplify your life and cultivate gratitude. People with dementia return to an almost childlike state. The world has become simpler, but also more confusing. People who lived fantastic full lives, raised families, run companies, fought wars. Options are now limited. The choice is not there. Yet this simplicity provides a space for the interactions described above. Limit yourself for just one day, if only to be grateful for the choices available when you return. Decide you will only interact with one person that day (so no Facebook, Twitter or social networking!), only watch one television show, eat only one food, or do only one activity.
On a scientific level, we need to learn about ‘people with dementia’, in terms of improving care and finding a future cure. However, it is equally important to shift our focus from the ‘dementia’ to the ‘people’ and what they can teach us right now, in the present, about how to live.
