Enhancing Communication for the Demented Patient and His Family

Abstract

The cognitive impairment and personality change in a demented individual engender a situation in which he is unable to cope or come to terms with the norms of society or family life. In the absence of therapeutic means of altering the dementing process, a useful and practical approach in the long-term management of the behavioural problem is to change the environment. This well-known principle of milieu therapy was applied to cognitively impaired people who were living at home by the establishment of a number of therapeutically orientated clubs in community centers in Jerusalem. Implicit in the model to be described in this paper are the ramifications which we consider to be an integral part of the project - the family support groups, group meetings with the children of the patients, the medical coverage, the team meetings of the staff, the case conferences, and the educational programs on problems of old age which have stemmed from the initiation of the project.