Today’s re-blog as part of World Alzheimer’s Month focuses on an article by Susan Macaulay which comments on Dementia not the cause in majority of harmful resident-on-resident interactions.
“It is important to emphasize that the vast majority of harmful resident-to-resident interactions that involve people who live with dementia in long-term care homes are the result of negative and distressing factors in the social (i.e. other people) and physical environment. In most situations, unmet human needs, situational frustrations, and perceived and real threats contribute or directly cause these behavioral expressions.
These social and physical environmental factors and unmet needs intersect with the person’s cognitive disability to generate the episodes. Most elders with dementia are not inherently aggressive. Like us, they react, respond, defend, and protect themselves when they experience distress, and when they sense that their dignity, privacy, identity, and personhood are threatened.”
Dementia not the cause in majority of harmful resident-on-resident interactions
When The Fog Lifts 