Rethinking Communication guide to advanced dementia

conversation, and we begin to feel ignored. We may feel that the person with dementia is being deliberately difficult. We might even feel embarrassed, if we think that other people are watching our interaction and can see that it isn’t going smoothly. It is common to become irritated, abrupt, fed up and exhausted by someone, even a loved one, with dementia. It’s disconcerting when we can no longer depend on them to help us figure out what is going wrong in the conversation. We can also feel grief and loss, because we miss the person with whom we used to have wonderful conversations. In short, it is clear that, as it progresses, dementia has a huge impact on conversation. This creates problems for those with a diagnosis as well as their conversation partners, like wives, husbands,