ABSTRACT
This chapter outlines biomedical, person-centred and social perspectives on dementia, and overview some of the important psychosocial interventions. It examines some of the critical issues experienced by carers of people with dementia and some of the legal issues involved, including provisions for substituted decision making. The history of dementia, and Alzheimer's disease in particular, has been divided into three stages. The first stage, at the beginning of the twentieth century, arose after the discovery by Alois Alzheimer of a brain pathology that led to early onset (pre-senile) dementia. The second stage, from the 1920s to the 1970s, focused on understanding 'senility' from, among others, a psychodynamic perspective and in the context of life stressors. The third stage, from the 1980s, emerged from a renewed scientific and medical interest in dementia and the recognition that the now-discarded concept of 'senility' was not a normal condition of ageing.
