Dementia, coercion, identity (DEMENTIA ID)

Dementia, change and identity

There are about 89,000 people who have dementia in Denmark, and due to the demographic development, the number is increasing. Dementia is a common term for about 200 different diseases, with Alzheimer being the most prevalent. Since dementia cannot be cured, care is the most important treatment effort. Therefore, tools are needed to help people with dementia and their families to cope with their life situation and ensure integrity and dignity in the course of the disease. For example, what should you do as a spouse if your wife does not want to be in the nursing home and begs to come home? How should you, as a health professional, act when a resident opposes getting a bath? Unfortunately, we still have a poor theoretical understanding of what dignity and integrity are for people with dementia and thus insufficient practical tools to effectively promote these two goals. The purpose of DEMENTIA ID is to support people with dementia and their families in coping with ethical dilemmas in life with dementia. We do this by developing an in-depth theoretical understanding of integrity and dignity as well as developing ethics and dialogue tools that can help them, their families and health professionals make informed ethical choices about care and treatment that ensure integrity and are perceived as dignified by all parties involved. DEMENTIA ID is implemented by a multidisciplinary project group, which includes dementia practitioners from the Municipality of Rudersdal and the Alzheimer's Association, as well as humanistic researchers from Danish Humanistic Dementia Research and the National Institute of Public Health. The project is being carried out in close collaboration with people with dementia, their families and health professionals and will result in new theory of integrity and dignity in dementia care and tools to promote these goals.