Tips for someone living with dementia

Everyday Citizenship and People with Dementia prioritises the ordinary lives of people with dementia, and thereby broadens the agenda towards everyday citizenship. The contributors bring to the fore the idea that a person living with dementia has multiple opinions, identities and a stake in society.

Traditionally, dementia has been defined primarily in terms of loss: loss of cognitive and communicative competencies, loss of identity, loss of personal relationships. People living with dementia have been portrayed as increasingly dependent on others, with their loved ones seen more as care givers than as spouses, children and relatives. However, in the last two decades this view of the person living with dementia has been increasingly challenged, and the focus has shifted from one of care to one of enabling people to live with dementia.

A diagnosis of dementia changes the ways people engage with each other – for those living with dementia, as well their families, caregivers, friends, health professionals, neighbours, shopkeepers and the community. This book has a focus on dementia as lived experience. It foregrounds dementia's social, moral, political and economic dimensions, investigating the challenges of reframing the dementia experience for all involved.