Understanding behaviours in dementia that challenge professional and family carers is never easy. However, over recent years we have achieved fresh insights by focusing not only on disease, but on the person with dementia, their life history and the quality of their lives, and consequently we appreciate that wandering, aggression, agitation, confusion and a host of other complex, at times bizarre behaviours that exhausted and exasperated carers struggle to cope with are not the result of brain pathology but instead represent the actions and reactions of people who may be living in unsupportive and insensitive care settings. What has become known as a person-centred understanding of dementia is not the product of an elegant clinical breakthrough but is founded on the stories of people. Stories about who they were, who they remain and the difficulties they face. Extraordinary stories about ordinary people. Understand that complex behaviours say more about the person than they do about their dementia then words, actions and emotions can become windows into the lives of people who are increasingly unseen. The signature theme of this presentation is therefore to demonstrate that behaviour in dementia is so often meaningful and not meaningless.
Keynote Presentation at The National Life Story Network Conference, Leeds, UK 12 Feb 2010
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Graham Stokes is Director of Dementia Care at Bupa Care Homes. Prior to this appointment he was a senior consultant clinical psychologist at South Staffordshire and Shropshire Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust where he was Head of Psychology Services for Older Adults and Adults with Neurodegenerative Diseases. Graham is a specialist in the causes of dementia, but his interests embrace the spectrum of dementia from diagnostics and neuropsychology to the care of people with complex needs and the understanding and resolution of challenging behaviour. He has been instrumental in the development of person-centred approaches to care.