ABSTRACT
Dementia is a topic of great pith and moment, a key issue for this time and for the future Governments, older people's organisations and international academic centres of excellence are all urgently concerned with dementia, but it is also one of the most important issues for societies across the world. This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts covered in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book focuses on one particular theme; representations of dementia in literature. It attempts to garner new insights and understandings of both dementia and literature within the exciting new field of Medical/Health Humanities among academics, policy makers and NGOs internationally. The development of new ideas about dementia is, at least to some extent, linked to new thinking about ageing. The emergence of gerontology, ageing studies and centres for ageing in the academic world, internationally, evinces a welcome debate on how people regard older people.
