| Popis: |
Promoting the well-being of, and caring for, people with dementia can be challenging as cognitive loss, changing behaviour and reduced possibilities of verbal communication makes assessing and responding to individual needs difficult. Kitwood (1995) first questioned the ‘culture of dementia care’ and the understanding of dementia on which it was based in the late 1980s. The ‘standard paradigm’ as Kitwood phrased it (cited in Bender 2003: 24) defines dementia as an organic, progressively degenerative disease. This view still prevails and ignores the social psychological environment to which the person with dementia is exposed post diagnosis. Kitwood argued that the ‘malignant social psychology’ (1997: 45) reinforces the negative beliefs associated with dementia such as a progressive loss of cognitive and psychological function. The ‘new culture of dementia care’, he suggested, creates a person-centred care environment in which ‘personhood’ (1997: 8) was maintained, offsetting and possibly even reversing neurological impairment (1997: 53). Since he shifted the focus away from a neuropathological to a person-centred approach, the debate on how best to assess care needs for those affected with dementia has intensified and, indeed, is ongoing (Holden 1995; Kitwood and Benson 1995; Perrin and May 2000; Bender 2003). |
