Better Living With Dementia

Better Living With Dementia: Implications for Individuals, Families, Communities, and Societies highlights evidence-based best practices for improving the lives of patients with dementia. It presents the local and global challenges of these patients, also coupling foundational knowledge with specific strategies to overcome these challenges. The book examines the trajectory of the disease, offers stage-appropriate practices and strategies to improve quality of life, provides theoretical and practical frameworks that inform on ways to support and care for individuals living with dementia, includes evidence-based recommendations for research, and details global examples of care approaches that work.

• Weaves research evidence and theories with practical know-how
• Identifies support strategies for home, community, and health care settings
• Provides stage-appropriate strategies relative to dementia severity
• Summarizes dementia pathology, diagnosis, and progression
• Considers the changing needs of both the individual with dementia and family and formal caregivers
• Offers evidence-informed recommendations for research, practice, policy, and how to make things better at home, in the community, in healthcare and service settings, and through national policies
• Provides local and global exemplars of what works
• Provides case vignettes to illustrate key points with real examples
• Contains brief conversations with national and international experts

Mental health professionals including clinical psychologists and psychiatric nurses; academic researchers; students

Introduction: A Framework for Understanding Impacts of Dementia and Supporting Quality of Life with Disease Progression

Part 1: About the Person
1. How the Brain is Affected
2. Lived Experiences of Individuals with Dementia
3. Breaking the Cycle of Despair
4. Making Life Better for Individuals Living with Dementia

Part II: About Caregivers
5. Family Member as Care Partner
6. How We Can Support Families
7. Formal caregivers: Role of the Inter-professional Team

Part III: About Home and Community Environments
8. The Physical Home Environment – A Neglected Therapeutic Context
9. Living in the community

Part IV: About Social Systems and Policy
10. Settings and Services of Care
11. Global Efforts and National Plans
12. Transforming Dementia care

Part V: Taking Action
13. Developing and Implementing an Action Plan
14. Putting It All Together