ABSTRACT
Attitudes towards those with dementia and their care have changed dramatically but slowly. From the time of Alzheimer’s recognition that dementia was a disease of the brain, potentially curable, the second major breakthrough was Kitwood’s insistence that those with dementia should be treated as persons, not the living dead. Neither insight has been powerful enough to rid us of the stigmas and stereotypes. This chapter examines the cultural ideas which continue to stand in the way of the changes needed to create a caring and less fearful way of encompassing those who experience dementia. We have shown that we can change attitudes towards gender, disability, race – albeit the struggle to do so is ongoing. We need to bring similar insights and strategies to thinking about the life cycle from birth to death, including ageing; to the experiences of strength and vulnerability that beset everyone; to our inherent interdependency; and our mortality. How we think of ourselves as human beings, as selves and persons, as individuals, as relational beings; how one’s social value is determined and how this changes over the life course; who constitutes the us or the other – all such ideas are embedded in cultural values that are deep-seated and usually taken-for-granted. All of them impact, directly and indirectly, on the experience of dementia – for those diagnosed and for those who care for them. Dementia brings these life challenges to the fore. It invites us to rethink the way we think about ‘being’ human and, in doing so, to create a society more capable of valuing the diversity of human experience.
