Dialogue and dementia

It is all rooted in the brain and the mind, and indeed the entire system of the speaker comprehends or responds to a particular relationship between people. For instance, how a dementia person will address a close caregiver is different to how they will talk to other people who are not close to them. The love, compassion, and care that one gives to the patient has a significant effect on psychology of language, and they will end up treating them specially compared to others that are farther from their care. Audience design is important in shaping the course of conversation with a dementia patient. For instance, if an individual succeeds in setting the right atmosphere and mood for interaction and conversation, the dementia patient will be excited and interested in continuing and taking part in the conversation.

Therefore, audience design will affect the conversation and dialogue with dementia patient. The people with dementia suffer from cognition impairment. As the disease takes root, their ability to recognize people reduces. This means that they will take time to go back through their memory, with many difficulties, in order to trace the person that they are addressing. As they do so, the person who will pop up in their minds first is the one who is closer to them. Someone who is good and close to them is considered bad because he or she is the one who perhaps knows their secrets, and they connect it with a past memory, and so those memories end up defining how the dementia patient addresses his or her audience.

Dementia patients will have a successful dialogue with people who are able to capture their attention. People who can’t get hold of the attention of dementia patient will have a hard time having a dialogue with them. Dementia patients require an environment without noise and distractions. A noisy audience will not be so smooth in their dialogue with dementia patient. The audience should be able to speak clearly with the dementia patient. Because a dementia patient usually suffers from memory and concentration, when the person they are talking to is too fast and some words are not audible, the patient may not have a successful dialogue with them. It will be different when the audience uses simple sentences and simple words that the person can understand without need for struggles.

The dementia patient should not be struggling to hear what the other person is saying or struggle to understand the meaning of what they are saying. If that is the case, they may try to answer but they will always answer the wrong thing because they do not understand what they are being asked. An audience that asks simple and answerable questions are likely to have a fruitful dialogue with dementia patients compared to those who ask questions that require a long explanation from the dementia patient. It is important to give the patient an easy time to answer the questions. For instance, asking a question that will require a yes or no answer will always be useful in the dialogue with dementia patient compared to asking something that requires them to give more details.

It is important to refrain from giving the patient too many choices or asking open-ended questions. It is even better to use visual prompts as this helps to clarify the question that you are asking. To dementia patients, remembering the good past is usually an affirming and soothing activity (Barnes & Brannelly, 2008). Most of the patients living with dementia find it difficult to remember things that happened a few minutes ago, but they find it relatively easier to remember what happened years ago. However, it is not good to remind them of hurting past, as this may hurt them more and worsen their symptoms. Thus, an audience that asks the patient questions that rely on short term memory may not have good responses from the patient.

How they handle such questions is often difficult and unclear. Dementia patients tend to retain their social skills. Often they are delighted to laugh with the audience, and this helps in getting the patient focused to the subject of discussion. An audience that is humorous is likely to reap the benefit of having the patient attentive and attracted to the topic of discussion, and they end up having a very fruitful and productive dialogue compared to an audience that is boring. An audience whose conversation is scientific, boring or just flat, with nothing to laugh about ends up losing the interest of the patient, and therefore the dialogue won’t be of great help (Yi, 2009). Therefore, audience design in terms of humor and interest will influence the course of a dialogue with dementia patient.

They should never be allowed to feel as though they are doing nothing in their dialogue. A successful audience is the one that will respond to the speaker’s concern with affection and reassurance. When the speaker is fully convinced that he or she is helpful and on the right track, and where their speech is receive with affection, they are likely to continue expressing themselves and this helps to solve many difficulties. Therefore, audience design in terms of the nature of responses that they give to the dementia speaker influence the course of the dialogue (Yi, 2009). An audience will receive different responses from the speaker depending on how they are able to redirect or distract a conversation that is continually getting tough.

In that way, how the audience is designed in terms of ability to change or redirect the speaker when the going gets tough will influence the address that the speaker gives to the audience (Barnes & Brannelly, 2008). Dementia patients find it hard to perform many tasks at the same time, or a huge volume of work. The audience should be designed in such a way that they are able to reduce the activities into a series of steps. The speaker feels that the task ahead is more manageable. For example, if you want the patient to talk about a certain event, ask them to start with how they woke up, then how they began, at what time did that event happen and so on.