Today’s Daily Mail contains the rather depressing news that a third of us are still scared of talking to someone with dementia. The article then takes a more positive turn by including some basic advice about how we should to talk to people with the condition.
On the face of it, it might appear that we haven’t moved very far in our attitude. However, this is clearly not the case. Dementia has been moving into the light, slowly and painfully, for a very long time. It’s no longer a case that “granddad’s gone a bit funny” – no, granddad has dementia. There’s a much greater level of awareness that dementia is a disease, not something as inevitable in old age as wrinkles.
That doesn’t make life any easier for people who are neglected or isolated right now because they have dementia, however. Tackling this problem isn’t one for the scientists that BRACE supports. The problem lies not in the pathology of dementia but within us. How do we overcome our fear?
We first need to recognise that we are afraid. Dementia is reportedly the medical condition that frightens most people. Perhaps this is because it’s currently incurable. Perhaps it’s because it attacks what it means to be human – identity, relationship, a sense of having and being part of a story. Dementia appears to us to be a long and increasingly dark tunnel that leads inexorably to death. We fear to approach it.
And yet, as the Daily Mail article reminds us, sufferers can have a reasonable quality of life. It’s up to the rest of us to understand that and make sure that we are part of the good things in their world, not contributors to a growing isolation.
At least we are talking about dementia as never before. Giving it a name – or a range of names – has helped enormously to make that possible. There is an ancient belief - found, for example, in the Bible – that naming something gives us power over it. This is true of things that we fear, and scientists like Alois Alzheimer have helped us all.
The more we learn and the more we talk about dementia, the better we shall be able to deal with it.
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