ABSTRACT
This chapter highlights the importance of mainstreaming or including rights into policy and practice for dementia, and offers insights into why people with dementia must be seen and accorded the same rights as all other people with disabilities. The year 2012 also marked the publication of the report Dementia: a public health priority, which provided an authoritative overview of the impact of dementia worldwide and links to disability. The misperceptions and myths of dementia regularly mean that those diagnosed often have great difficulty in protecting their own rights, or of the rights of the person they are supporting with dementia. Members of Dementia Alliance International and people with dementia around the world are systematically proving this to be untrue. Brain LeBlanc writes candidly about the impact of the invisibility of our impairments, and therefore of having dementia. Brian is 57 years old and was diagnosed in October of 2014 with Alzheimer’s disease.
