ABSTRACT
T he m ost im portant developm ent in dem entia care over the last decade has been a new awareness o f the significance o f the experience and perspective o f the individual with dem entia.T he emphasis in the 1980’s on the situation o f fam ily caregivers, the ‘hidden victim s o f A lzheim er’s disease’, led to major improvements in understanding o f the problems faced by fam ilies, and im proved support for them . A tendency developed however, to see caregiver support as the major goal o f dem entia care services. At the same tim e, biom edical research on Alzheim er’s and other dementias continued to grow apace, and served to focus attention on neurotransm itters, amyloid plaques, neurofibrillary tangles and chrom osom es, rather than on the person and their reaction to the pathological changes in the brain.
