Episode 55: Understanding Dementia with guest Angela Gentile
About Angela Gentile
Angela’s interesting in dementia started around the age of 17 when she started working in a nursing (personal care) home. She started working in the kitchen and started noticing that whenever she was around older adults, and talking with them, she felt really good. As her roles started changing in the nursing home, she started to learn more about dementia (e.g., Alzheimer’s disease), and ended up going to school to be a social worker at the University of Manitoba. Angela’s natural inclination was to focus on aging and geriatrics. Working with people aged 65+, and learning more about the problems and issues associated with getting older, naturally led Angela to working in nursing homes again - now as a social worker. She started learning more about dementia from the educational standpoint, and then went back to university to get a Master's degree with a specialization in aging.
Given her background, Angela has a very well-rounded perspective on aging and getting older, which includes topics related to dementia and caregiving. Angela naturally progressed into specializing in caregivers who are looking after people who have memory problems (e.g., Alzheimer's disease or any other kind of dementia.)
About Dementia
Dementia is beyond normal forgetfulness – e.g., I forgot where:
I put my keys
I left my glasses
Dementia goes beyond that.
Dementia is a syndrome. Dementia is an umbrella term that is associated with many signs and symptoms, including:
Declines in memory
Disorientation to time and place
Challenges with problem-solving
Problems with language
Personality changes
Getting a Dementia Diagnosis
If you are concerned that you or your loved one might be exhibiting signs and symptoms associated with dementia, visit your doctor and share your concerns. The doctor should hopefully do a complete workup – e.g., blood tests, brain scan, etc. Your doctor also may refer you or your loved one to a specialist (e.g., neurologist.) Your doctor will rule out alternative explanations for the experienced signs and symptoms (e.g., cognitive decline), such as a vitamin B12 deficiency or a urinary tract infection.
CLICK HERE TO ACCESS Angela’s free book chapter on “Getting a Dementia Diagnosis”
Book: Caring for a Husband with Dementia
When Angela was completing her Master’s program in Social Work, she chose to work with women who were caring for a husband with dementia. Her job was to design, implement and evaluate a short-term counseling program for women who were caring for a husband who had dementia. Angela went into their home and provided them with one-on-one counseling, educational support, etc.
Angela’s book covers what she learned from the experience she has working with these women who were caregiving for their husbands with dementia. The topics covered in the book include:
Understanding the caregiving role
Stages of dementia
Loss, grief and bereavement
Practical and emotional support (e.g., how to ask for help)
Caregiver burnout
Communication
Behavioural symptoms
This book supports anybody who is caring for anybody – it doesn't necessarily have to be a woman caring for a husband. It could be any partnership – e.g., a daughter helping a father; a friend helping a friend; etc.
There is a lot of talk about how to communicate with someone who has dementia, because communication is key and can be challenging when someone has lost some of their communication skills.
Companion App: Dementia Caregiver Solutions
Along with the book, Angela also made a companion app – called Dementia Caregivers Solutions – to help caregivers manage some of those difficult to manage behaviours (for the iPhone with iOS 8 and above).
How the app works
Let’s say you are trying to help your loved one have a bath. A typical reaction for someone who has dementia might be:
I don't need help with a bath.
I will do it myself.
I already had a bath.
The person with dementia might forgot that their last bath was a week ago, and they are due for another. So, when the caregiver asks the person to have a bath today there may been some push back.
The app will give the person's caregivers some ideas of how to manage this behaviour. In the app, you would go to the section about refusing care and you would look up certain solutions. For example, offer validation by saying something like, “I know you don't like it when we do this. To be honest, neither do I. How about we do it as fast as we can, so we can get on to doing something else.”
The app shares a lot of different ideas to help the person with dementia agree and cooperate. In the app, you can also save the ideas that work for your and your loved one. You can then access a nice little document of the things that you're going to try or the things that worked for you in your situation.
Online Dementia Support Communities
Angela and her colleagues have created a private Facebook community for caregivers of people with dementia. It’s called the Dementia Caregivers Solutions Support Group – CLICK HERE TO ACCESS. In the group you can share your experiences, challenges and questions and get feedback from others in the group who have had similar experiences.
About Mild Cognitive Impairment
Mild Cognitive Impairment is a diagnosis a person would get when their memory problems are a little more problematic than the person who, for example, forgot where they put their keys. Mild Cognitive Impairment is the point where the person knows that their memory skills aren't as good as they used to be, and they have to use start using different techniques to get along in everyday life. Mild Cognitive Impairment is not quite at dementia, because the person can still manage their day-to-day function (e.g., driving, making meals), but they’re experiencing memory problems beyond the norm for their age.
Some people stay in the Mild Cognitive Impairment stage for 2-5 years. Some people with Mild Cognitive Impairment go on to develop dementia. There are even some people who reverse back into the normal aging stage.
Memory Strategies in Healthy Aging
Here are some strategies to help improve memory within the context of healthy aging:
Give yourself some extra time. Think of your memory like a filing cabinet. The words are in there, in the filing cabinet, but it's kind of buried a little bit deeper. Give yourself some extra time to dig a little bit deeper to find that word. Taking a minute to let yourself remember will help you build a lost neural connection back up again. By remembering the information (e.g., a word), and pulling it back into consciousness, you're rebuilding the neural circuit. The more times you bring something up into memory, the stronger that neural circuit will get. If you don't ever let yourself remember the information, you will never allow your brain to rebuild that neural connection that was obviously weak to begin with.
Pay attention and be mindful. Sometimes we haven’t even encoded the information in the first place. It may be the case that you are not remembering something, because you haven’t been paying attention in the first place. If you are doing things on autopilot (e.g., putting condition in your hair), you may not remember it happening. We need to be paying attention to remember. Try to keep your thoughts in the present moment.
Form associations. When learning the name of a new person (e.g., Mary), make an association between new Mary and something you already know. For example, “I knew a Mary at work, and she had about the same haircut as this new Mary.”
Keep physically active. The more active you are, the more you will help keep your brain and your organs healthy. Being active helps keep the blood pumping through your veins, the oxygen flowing to your brain, your arteries cleaned out. Find a fun, easy, healthy and safe kind of physical activity, that will help keep your brain, memories and cognitive skills healthy.
Conclusion
To learn more about Angela Gentile, her books and all of the incredible work she is doing, you can visit her website by CLICKING HERE.
To access the Dementia Caregivers Solutions Support Group Facebook Community – CLICK HERE.
The Dementia Caregivers Solutions app can be found in the App Store.
To follow Angela Gentile on social media:
· Facebook – CLICK HERE
· Instagram – CLICK HERE
· Twitter – CLICK HERE