Hardly surprising perhaps, given the prevailing, dismal medical model with which dementia is often viewed: as a journey of emptiness and inexorable physical and mental decline.
This depersonalised stereotyping over-simplifies the experience, presenting a one-dimensional view of personhood, overly dominated by cognition and short-term memory loss. Of course, as the disease progresses, the person’s thoughts and words inevitably become more tangled and confused.
However, a broader (and more humane) definition recognises that a person is far more than their thoughts alone and that together with their many long-term memories and experiences, the essence of the person remains, despite changes to the brain.
To keep well-connected to a person living with the condition, we need to become increasingly attentive to their non-verbal clues — as well as our own. We need to try to be more aware of what we are both communicating, beyond the words.