1st Edition
How to Live Well with Dementia Expert Help for People Living with Dementia and their Family, Friends, and Carer Partners
How to Live Well with Dementia: Expert Help for People Living with Dementia and their Family, Friends, and Carer Partners provides an array of essential guidance about the different aspects of dementia for all whose lives are touched by dementia, including people living with dementia as well as their support network.
Following an effective Q&A framework, this book offers valuable easy to navigate guidance on the burning questions that those living with dementia and their carers need to know. Questions addressed include ‘How can I adjust to life with the diagnosis?’, ‘How can I plan for the future?’ and ‘How can we support our loved ones living with dementia?’. It provides expert explanations about changes in the brain and the various causes of dementia, and well as support on how to adjust to living with a diagnosis. It also offers practical information about care planning and advanced directives, maintaining health and social connections, accessing appropriate community care, and supporting medical and hospital care. It concludes with important self-care information for care partners.
Written jointly by academic experts and experts by lived experience, this book is indispensable for people living with dementia, care partners, and anyone wanting to understand more about the condition, as well as health and social care professionals and students of health and social care.
Introduction
Part 1
Chapter 1. Does something feel different? Is it time to seek a diagnosis?
Chapter 2. How to adjust to life with the diagnosis?
Chapter 3. Planning for the future – what about advance care directives and care planning?
Part 2
Chapter 4. How can we promote and maintain social health and wellbeing when living with dementia?
Chapter 5. What care and support in the community might be accessed?
Chapter 6. How do I supporting the person living with dementia with hospital appointments and admissions?
Part 3
Chapter 7. How do we plan a move to long stay care?
Chapter 8. How do we deal with end of life and palliative care?
Chapter 9. How is it possible to balance the needs of the care partners and supporters? Looking after yourself
Conclusion
Biography
Anthea Innes moved from Scotland in 2022 to Canada where she is a Professor Health, Aging and Society, Gilbrea Research Chair in Aging and Mental Health and Director of the Gilbrea Centre for Studies in Aging at McMaster University. She has conducted social research on dementia for nearly 30 years.
Megan E. O’Connell is a Registered Doctoral Psychologist and a Professor of Psychology at the University of Saskatchewan, Saskatchewan, Canada. She leads the clinical neuropsychology team in the diagnostic the Rural and Remote Memory Clinic, provides care partner support, and researches issues related to dementia care.
Carmel Geoghegan is based in Ireland and after being a carer for her mother living with dementia has remained an advocate and supporter of campaigns that keep the spotlight on Dementia and End of Life Care. Her priority is the development of practice and policies that respect people living with a dementia diagnosis, particularly in rural areas.
Phyllis Fehr is a person living with dementia in Canada. She is currently a patient advisory to the Alzheimer’s Board for Canada. She provides local leadership to the Empowering Dementia-friendly Communities Hamilton, Haldimand
“For those facing dementia, whether personally or as a caregiver, this book offers practical advice and heartfelt encouragement.”
--Christopher Barry, CEO, Alzheimer Society of Canada.
“This excellent book helps us all to become proactive instead of just reactive, which will improve the lives of everyone who lives with or is affected by dementia. Finding out as much information as you can about living with dementia, then changing your life as you learn, helps make the symptoms and deficits less challenging to live with for yourself and those around you. This is a must-have book for those diagnosed, their families, and everyone involved in their care and support. This is a guide that I wish I had when first diagnosed. It starts at the beginning and accompanies you alongside your life with dementia, until the final chapter where it continues to support those left behind. All the information you need is in one place, written by experts, including those who have been directly affected- the experts by experience.”
--Chris Roberts, Chair of the European Working Group of People with Dementia (EWGPWD) and Ambassador for Alzheimer’s Society UK.
