Rethinking Communication guide to advanced dementia

understandable though. When it gets too hard to relate to someone we find ourselves withdrawing emotionally. Being aware of these feelings is incredibly valuable in providing loving care to those with advanced dementia. If we are not self-aware then we add to the problems. Experiencing a lack of social interaction with others may lead to withdrawal from social life completely. Professor Michael Duffy, in his Handbook of Counseling and Psychotherapy with Older Adults , says that this withdrawal reflects our “intuitive dependence on language as a sign of emotional connection”. It is surprisingly easy for many of us to believe that when speech has gone, so has communication. Our unconscious dependence on language leaves those living with severe dementia increasingly excluded, not only from the social world that was familiar to them, but from any social world at all.