Library guides: Communication and Dementia: Content

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Dementia Australia resources

Talking to someone with dementia
Losing the ability to communicate can be one of the most frustrating and difficult problems for people with dementia, their families and carers. As the illness progresses, a person with dementia experiences a gradual lessening of their ability to communicate. They find it more and more difficult to express themselves clearly and to understand what others say.

The Dementia Guide by Dementia Australia
Publication Date: 2022
For people living with dementia, their families and carers. The Dementia Guide is an important resource for any person impacted by any form of dementia, of any age. The Guide contains information about the impact dementia may have on a person, the treatment, support and services they may need.
The 4th edition of this guide is now available to read online, download a pdf, listen to an audio version or request a print copy.
Discrimination and dementia – enough is enough by Dementia Australia
Dementia Action Week Report 2021
For all the increased recognition of human rights over the past decades and the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities coming into force, people living with dementia still report experiencing discrimination and not feeling fully included within society. The Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities affirms that all persons with all types of disabilities (including people living with dementia) must enjoy the same rights as everyone else, including rights to autonomy in decision-making, independent living, community inclusion, and liberty. The challenge, however, is to shift attitudes, and design and deliver services, businesses and infrastructure that are flexible, innovative, accessible, appropriate and culturally safe to ensure people with dementia, their families and carers are well supported and included within the Australian community.
I believe in the magic of it : Creative arts engagement, wellbeing and dementia by Dementia Australia
Publication Date: 2023
This discussion paper explores how engaging people living with dementia in the creative arts can improve their wellbeing. Exploring the psychosocial approaches to support the wellbeing of people living with dementia. Including creative arts, community-based creativity, culture and country, music and dance, reminiscence and storytelling.
Select your language
Our dementia Help Sheets provide advice, common sense approaches and practical strategies on a wide range of subjects. These Help Sheets are available in more than 30 languages

Books

Why Dementia Makes Communication Difficult by Alison Wray
Publication Date: 2021
Dementia brings many challenges, not least its ability to disrupt effective communication. The quality of communication plays a major role in how well people living with a dementia manage. When communication doesn't work well, the complications of dementia are compounded. Rather than only offering tips on what to say and how to say it, this book explores the underlying motivations of communication, so we can better understand why we say what we do, why we say it the way we do, what can go wrong, and how attempts to fix things can go awry.
Dementia Together by Pati Bielak-Smith
Publication Date: 2020
Some of the pain in dementia comes from feeling hopeless, alone, or disconnected from loved ones—but a broken relationship can be healed, this book outlines a path to a life with dementia that includes more life and less illness. With imagination, compassion, empathy, and quiet humour, the real-life stories in Dementia Together show you how to build a healthy dementia relationship. Because there are ways to communicate that result in greater capacity to receive as well as to provide both warm connection and practical collaboration.
The Dynamics of Dementia Communication by Alison Wray
Publication Date: 2020
It is well recognized that when people are living with a dementia, effective communication can be a challenge for both them and those they interact with. Despite a plethora of good advice, it can be surprisingly hard to sustain constructive communicative behaviours and to integrate them successfully into routine daily care and interaction. The Dynamics of Dementia Communication asks why that is. What is it about communication, as a human social and cognitive practice, that makes it so difficult to manage the disruptions caused by dementia?
The Montessori Method for Connecting to People with Dementia by Tom Brenner; Karen Brenner
Creative activities can support people with dementia, leading to moments of reconnection and joy. This book shows how the Montessori method - with its arts-based, person-centred and positive focus - can help caregivers connect to people with dementia. Communication topics include: communication problems, building strengths, connecting with the past and listening deeply.
The Validation Breakthrough by Naomi Feil; Vicki de Klerk-Rubin
Publication Date: 2014
Stories, ideas, directions, and information about the Validation Method and the respect, fulfillment, and human connections it creates. The Validation Breakthrough has helped thousands of professional and family caregivers improve their relationships with residents and loved ones with dementia.
Adaptive Interaction and Dementia by Maggie Ellis; Arlene Astell; Suzanne Scott (Illustrator)
Publication Date: 2017
This guide to Adaptive Interaction explains how to assess the communication repertoires of people with dementia who can no longer speak, and offers practical interventions for those who wish to interact with them. It includes communication assessment tools and guidance on how to build on the communication repertoire of the individual with dementia using nonverbal means including imitation, facial expressions, sounds, movement, eye gaze and touch. With accessible evidence and case studies based on the authors' research,
Communication in the eCollection
View more resources on communication in our eCollection

Audiobooks

Speaking Peace by Marshall Rosenberg
Our words have the power to create profound healing or incredible suffering. Yet even with the best intentions, it is often difficult to express ourselves in ways that build harmony and trust. Nonviolent Communication is used to help families, and other reach accord in seemingly impossible conflicts.
Nonviolent Communication by Marshall Rosenberg
What if you could defuse tension and create accord in even the most volatile situations—just by changing the way you spoke?

Video content

Papers /research

Communication Strategies to Assist Comprehension in Dementia
Weirather R. R. (2010). Communication strategies to assist comprehension in dementia. Hawaii medical journal, 69(3), 72–74.

Communication with individuals with dementia requires use of conversational strategies from health care providers. Strategies are provided for issues pertaining to poor comprehension. The strategies promote more successful comprehension and compliance, offset mood disorder, and create ease in the way that health information may be accepted by the patient.

Read online

Enhancing Communication in Adults with Dementia and Age-Related Hearing Loss - Seminars in Hearing
Mamo, S. K., Oh, E., & Lin, F. R. (2017). Enhancing Communication in Adults with Dementia and Age-Related Hearing Loss. Seminars in hearing, 38(2), 177–183. https://doi.org/10.1055/s-0037-1601573

For many adults with dementia, age-related hearing loss is undiagnosed and/or untreated. Untreated hearing loss can exacerbate common dementia-related behavioural symptoms, such as depression, apathy, agitation. Despite the potential benefits to the individual and the family, pursuing and adopting hearing aids for persons with dementia presents with many challenges. We have found that some individuals show improvements in dementia-related problem behaviours and/or in measures of social engagement after brief aural rehabilitation interventions that provide non-custom amplification.
There are opportunities in this population to provide basic, simple strategies and make substantial improvements as long as we adopt approaches that bring the services to the people, instead of bringing the people to us in the audiology clinic.

Read online

What is truth? An inquiry about truth and lying in dementia care - by Mental Health Foundation
Carers often have challenging decisions to make when a person is living with different realities and beliefs Should they agree or contradict? What should they lie? This report provides guidance in these situations.

Smartphone and tablet apps

AmuseIT
Feelings of isolation can be a problem for those living with dementia, and it can be difficult for those who care for them to know how to engage in conversation. Caregivers, family members and friends can support connection and communication with a person living with dementia by using the AmuseIT app.