ABSTRACT
This chapter explores how the concept of complicated grieving/disenfranchised grieving applies to dementia sufferers and their carers. Some suggestions are made about practical responses to the problem. The discussion mainly focuses on the issues for carers, in particular spouses, of people with Alzheimer’s disease, the most common cause of dementing illnesses and one of the most complex. However, it is applicable to the other dementing illnesses and also to people with acquired brain injury, especially that involving the frontal lobe. Grieving is that complex emotional process involving shock, confusion, anger, guilt, longing, and sadness which follows loss experienced by individuals or groups. An important reason for the complication is the fact that all grieving must take place on three “planes,” the psychological, the sociological, and the mythological, in order to be complete. The chapter explains the three planes of grieving.
