Cher Riley-Hart has extensive experience in working with Dementia. She has also organised Dementia Aware and Dementia Awareness Days which are both aimed at raising awareness for Dementia.
Cher kindly agreed to be a guest blogger for this piece and to try and answer some of the questions you have all asked me about the impact of Dementia on individuals:
Personality:
The development of personality
is influenced by several factors. These include our Culture, Beliefs,
Opportunities, Emotions, Memories, Friends, family and other relationships.
Additionally genetics which we are all born with give us our own temperament
and life experiences whether negative or positive will continue to shape our personality
and character throughout our lives. The impact of Dementia, for this reason,
will vary from individual to individual.
Those with Dementia may no
longer remember who they are or who those around them are. They may only
remember themselves as very young, living with Mum or Dad, for example.
2. Biography:
Biography, which links
strongly in with personality, refers to what has happened to an individual
throughout their life, If a person was adopted or in the care system themselves
or had a rich or poorer life. All of this too has to be understood about a
person, in order to provide them with a person- centered approach. The history
of a person’s life (their biography), will have an impact on their experience
of Dementia.
A person with Dementia may suddenly be unable to remember important facts
about their lives. They might not remember being married, that they went on to
lead very successful lifestyles, that they had children and so on. Their whole
world suddenly stops from being on-going to going back in time. Dementia can
completely stop them from remembering what and who they were.
3. Health.
The fact that someone has a Form of Dementia means that already their
health is jeopardised. However, this can also lead to other health issues. A
person may simply forget that they have to take certain drugs to keep their
heart or blood pressure stable and things like this can have further and a more
serious impact on their health.
Health, which also includes a
person’s physical and sensory health, will have a huge impact on their
experience of Dementia. Understanding a person’s health needs will be
beneficial if not essential for a number of reasons.
For example, a number of
unrelated conditions can cause confusion. Things like metabolic disorders which
cause chemical reactions in your body and upset the process of metabolism.
These include diabetes, iron deficiencies or side effects from medication.
Likewise a person suffering from a UTI, or who is
in pain may not be able to say exactly that they have a pain and where it is.
Sensory functions if they are impaired such as
sight, or not working efficiently like sense of smell or hearing can all add to
confusion which is then doubled because of the Dementia that a person is also
suffering from. There are also additional risk factors to these conditions.
Someone who has a UTI or a temporary hearing loss due to ear infection, will be
at risk of falling and therefore the persons mobility will be affected. Or they
can become disorientated when they are in unfamiliar situations.
4. Neurological impairment.
Neurological Impairment or NI is the actual damage
to the brain itself. This could be because of chemical imbalances, deficits or
some advancing disease. The impairment or damage will vary from one person to
another and also may be in different parts of the brain where the disease or
impairment is.
With so many different forms of Dementia, the rate
at which the dementia advances will vary from one person to another. It is
important to understand what type of Dementia a person has, to understand N.I.
People with dementia have
significantly impaired intellectual functioning that interferes with normal
activities and relationships.
5. Social Psychology
S.P. refers to the person’s environment and whether
the people within it can help them or not. It means and refers to what is
happening in a person’s life and whether they have a support network of family
and friends around them who are able to enable them and support them fully.
Care workers and care settings all play an important part in influencing a
person S.P.
A person with Dementia will have altered feelings and thoughts due to
the confusion that is caused by the disease. They will struggle to make sense
of the world around them and their personal relationships may become strained
if there are behaviour changes.
Find more resources for nvq and Diploma in Health and Social Care on my website Baffled by NVQ
No comments:
Post a Comment