Yes, the whole arguing with dementia patients notion came from the idea that you need to "re-orient" them back to reality in hopes it would slow the progression of dementia. It doesn't work. It just makes people upset.
It took a while for me to convince my family of this. For nearly a year they insisted on reminding my grandmother, multiple times a day, that my grandfather was dead whenever she asked for him. Then she would cry and they would lament how heartbreaking it was. She did it with me and I said "Oh, he's parking the car, he'll be right in." And my family was LIVID because "what's she going to think when he doesn't come in from parking the car?" forgetting, of course, that she won't ever get that far.
Eventually they bought into it more and everyone was spared a lot of pain. Not the least of whom being my grandmother who no longer had to relive being told her husband was dead over and over and over again, especially by people who just sort of broke that news abruptly to a woman who, in her mind, was hearing it for the first time.
Imagine a loved one dies and when you ask about them someone just sort of snaps "What? What are you going on about? He's dead!" Yet, that's pretty much how people tell people with dementia news like that. Not only counterproductive but inhumane.
Orthophlox t1_iuht2rd wrote
Reply to comment by Polymathy1 in My nans getting dementia, sort of sad sort of funny by mistermaster415
Yes, the whole arguing with dementia patients notion came from the idea that you need to "re-orient" them back to reality in hopes it would slow the progression of dementia. It doesn't work. It just makes people upset.
It took a while for me to convince my family of this. For nearly a year they insisted on reminding my grandmother, multiple times a day, that my grandfather was dead whenever she asked for him. Then she would cry and they would lament how heartbreaking it was. She did it with me and I said "Oh, he's parking the car, he'll be right in." And my family was LIVID because "what's she going to think when he doesn't come in from parking the car?" forgetting, of course, that she won't ever get that far.
Eventually they bought into it more and everyone was spared a lot of pain. Not the least of whom being my grandmother who no longer had to relive being told her husband was dead over and over and over again, especially by people who just sort of broke that news abruptly to a woman who, in her mind, was hearing it for the first time.
Imagine a loved one dies and when you ask about them someone just sort of snaps "What? What are you going on about? He's dead!" Yet, that's pretty much how people tell people with dementia news like that. Not only counterproductive but inhumane.