Living with persons with dementia is very different from living with normal older persons, because dementia impacts behavior and the person needs a lot of support to do various activities of daily living and this required support keeps increasing over time.
Dementia caregivers need to understand and prepare for the caregiving role. They have to adjust the home to make it suitable for the person. Several caregiving skills are needed. Caregivers have to learn how to talk with persons with dementia, how to help them do tasks, and how to cope with worrying behavior. They have to support the person through all the stages of dementia, right till the last stage when persons become fully dependent. Family members have to plan the care and share the work and costs. And since caregiving is very stressful, caregivers have to also be careful of their own emotions and self-care. Others around them have to help them.
This section discusses topics related to dementia care. All material is written from a caregiver perspective. While the discussions will be useful to all caregivers, the setting assumed here is India.
In this section:
- Dementia Home Care: An Overview.
- Understand the caregiver’s role.
- Plan care for various stages of dementia.
- Adapt the home for persons with dementia.
- Caregiving Essential Toolkit.
- How to communicate with a person with dementia.
- Help with Activities of Daily Living (ADL).
- Handle Behavior Challenges in Dementia.
- Special tips for challenging behaviors: wandering, incontinence, repetitions, sundowning.
- Late-stage dementia care.
- Using Trained Attendants for Dementia Home Care.
- Using various dementia/ home care services.
- Improve the quality of life of persons with dementia.
- Coordinate dementia care with family members.
- Caregiver emotions and stress.
- How relatives/ friends/ colleagues can help a family coping with dementia.
- Long-Distance Dementia Caregiving for Persons living in India.
- Some notes from Dementia Care during COVID-19.
More resources are available at Resources and Downloads. To read about the experiences of dementia caregivers in India, see: Caregiver Voices.
Next: Dementia Home Care: An Overview