Alternative (nonpharmacological) methods to live better with dementia

This is a re-post from Jessica Kingsley Publishers. I came to know about Shibley Rahman through his blog, livingwelldementia.org. Check it out for some more great information in dementias, policy, and society – Thanks for your work, Dr. Rahman!

You can also read my related posts:

Review of Alive Inside

My work with Music & Memory

There is an alternative if you want people to live better with dementia

Some highlights:

A temptation of a medical doctor to prescribe a ‘magic bullet’ can easily explain away the ‘over-medicalisation of illness’, leading the Academy of Royal Colleges justifiably to take action earlier this year.

Every chemical medication has its side effects. I am always impressed with the ease at which the pharmaceutical industry is able to market their drugs, given that there are 1000 billion nerve cells in the human brain all connected with one another directly or indirectly in various ways.

With so many different functions of the human brain, such as memory, attention, perception, language or planning, to name but a few, it has been a difficult task to work out which particular ‘hubs’ involving parts of the brain are particularly involved in certain functions.

You can read the full article by clicking on the title, above.

Dementia Friends in Canada – showing there is a “wrong type of education”

Dementia Friends in Canada – showing there is a “wrong type of education”

This blog post comes from another blog called Dementia Vision, first posted June 7, 2015

Chris Roberts, who was diagnosed with mixed vascular and Alzheimer’s dementia in his late 40s, made a very focused comment yesterday in conversation with Angela Rippon at the annual Alzheimer’s Show in London.

Chris argued that we can all ‘be aware’, but “awareness is very different from education”. Continue reading