By Jesse F. Ballenger in Newsday:

People with Alzheimer’s and other forms of dementia are becoming an important resource as we face the challenge of caring for the many millions of people who will experience cognitive decline in the coming decades. Increasingly, they are testifying to their value and dignity as persons even as they face the progressive loss of their ability to function independently.

… the real power of these patients is to change perceptions of dementia, to allow caregivers to see people with dementia, whatever their losses and limitations, as still valuable, still able to make the world a better place.

We need more public funding for programs like these.

… If we view having dementia as a zero-sum game in which diagnosis equals complete burden on society, then clearly the situation is hopeless.

… But if we can learn from the experience of people with dementia that selfhood persists despite profound losses and limitations, if we learn to recognize and encourage the abilities that people with dementia retain to make the world better, we may be surprised to find that we have within us, all of us, the resources to meet the challenge.

Ballenger is a historian of medicine who teaches in the Science, Technology and Society Program at Penn State University.

This entry was posted on Monday, July 21st, 2008 at 8:20 am and is filed under advocacy, alzheimer's, commentary, NOT2BEMISSED, research news. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.