Communication and Dementia
Unit 18: Understanding the role of communication and interactions with individuals who have dementia
Unit Code: DEM 308
1. How do individuals with dementia communicate through their behaviour (1.1)
Persons with dementia may communicate through behaviours such as:
• Repetition of actions or questions, this may communicate anxiety over memory loss, boredom from inactivity, to seek reassurance, picking at clothing due to anxiety.
• Aggression, this may communicate depression, an inability to rationalise, impaired judgment, feeling embarrassed and fearful of humiliation, frustration that they are unable to remember what they are meant to be doing or that others do not understand their need to accomplish tasks that they feel to be important. Can find no other way to express themselves.
• Pacing or walking, this may communicate a desire to visit a certain place or person. Although the individual may have forgotten who or where. They may be bored and attempting to use up energy, uncomfortable from sitting, confusion about what they are meant to be doing or where they are, to enter in to past routines of behaviour that once served an important purpose that the individual feels they need to accomplish.
• Becoming suspicious of others, this may communicate that the individual is experiencing memory loss and is having difficulty recognizing familiar faces
• Pointing and vocalizing to communicate their intentions as the individual loses the use and understanding of their vocabulary
2. How you as a carer can misinterpret communication (1.2)
• Not being attentive and missing behavioural communications such as picking at items, failing to make eye contact or being out of the persons view, not creating an environment conducive to communication (adequate lighting, low background noise levels etc)
• Not allowing the individual time to process information before continuing the conversation.
• Misunderstanding the intention behind a given response as the
Unit Code: DEM 308
1. How do individuals with dementia communicate through their behaviour (1.1)
Persons with dementia may communicate through behaviours such as:
• Repetition of actions or questions, this may communicate anxiety over memory loss, boredom from inactivity, to seek reassurance, picking at clothing due to anxiety.
• Aggression, this may communicate depression, an inability to rationalise, impaired judgment, feeling embarrassed and fearful of humiliation, frustration that they are unable to remember what they are meant to be doing or that others do not understand their need to accomplish tasks that they feel to be important. Can find no other way to express themselves.
• Pacing or walking, this may communicate a desire to visit a certain place or person. Although the individual may have forgotten who or where. They may be bored and attempting to use up energy, uncomfortable from sitting, confusion about what they are meant to be doing or where they are, to enter in to past routines of behaviour that once served an important purpose that the individual feels they need to accomplish.
• Becoming suspicious of others, this may communicate that the individual is experiencing memory loss and is having difficulty recognizing familiar faces
• Pointing and vocalizing to communicate their intentions as the individual loses the use and understanding of their vocabulary
2. How you as a carer can misinterpret communication (1.2)
• Not being attentive and missing behavioural communications such as picking at items, failing to make eye contact or being out of the persons view, not creating an environment conducive to communication (adequate lighting, low background noise levels etc)
• Not allowing the individual time to process information before continuing the conversation.
• Misunderstanding the intention behind a given response as the