People with dementia often get diagnosed with depression and prescribed medication to treat their depression. I have yet to meet a person with dementia who actually has depression.
Instead, what I observe is people with symptoms of dementia that make them “look” depressed. It makes sense when we understand the particular cognitive skills that are lost in dementia.
People with dementia are losing three primary cognitive skills: memory skills, rational thinking skills, and attention skills.
Memory skills give us the ability to remember and recall information. When these skills fail, it becomes very difficult to remember the names of our friends; difficult to remember what we just did while it is clear that everyone else in the group remembers well. It becomes difficult to remember the very things we used to get up out of our chairs to do. It is easy to see, then, why staying in the chair becomes the pattern…social failures and forgetting what we used to do will keep us sitting in our chair…which begins to look like depression.
Rational thinking skills are the very skills that help us go through the step-by-step process of accomplishing a task; the skills that help us compare and contrast, solve problems, see cause and effect, and use good judgment to make decisions. When these skills are failing, we will struggle to do the tasks we once did with ease. We will have a harder time figuring out how to make a tool, the computer, the phone, or even our shoelaces work. We will only be able to complete one simple step at a time, which is entirely disabling when left to our own devices with a multi-step process. So, staying in the chair becomes what we do…when we have forgotten why we used to get out of the chair, what to do and how to do it once we are up.
Loss of attention skills means that we will have a harder time directing and maintaining our attention, so keeping focused on a task becomes very difficult. The successful completion of a task, then, becomes unlikely. Staying in the chair is less risky, and ultimately more successful when our ability to remember and complete tasks are diminishing.
Sitting in a chair is what happens when people with dementia lose the unique cognitive skills that previously helped them be successful at getting something meaningful and important done.
There is another remedy besides anti-depressant medication which comes with its host of possible side effects. The answer is a dementia-supportive companion who understands how the unique loss of cognitive skills will disable a person; someone who understands how to draw a person out of their chair in a way that minimizes the risk of failure and brings a sense of security and well-being, and a way that brings a rich experience of life.
Before you label your loved one with dementia as depressed, find them a companion trained in the DAWN Method, and watch their life blossom.
Privileged to watch lives blossom again,
Jill
