In an increasingly medicalised world, almost every ailment seems to have a treatment. The never-ending aisles of local superpharmacies are laden with elixirs and cure-alls, each one promising to be the answer to your health needs. When many of the illnesses associated with ageing can be readily addressed by modern science, the notable exception is dementia.
Dementia is the second-leading cause of death in Australia – the first, for women – and set to double in prevalence by 2054. Rose Capp’s Demystifying Dementia: Everything you need to know provides an essential insight into this often misunderstood condition and details how we can attempt to properly manage and live with it.
Capp is a registered nurse and dementia care educator in the aged care sector and an academic at Flinders University, as well as a policy advisor at Dementia Australia. Through this experience in the field (alongside her work as a film critic and choir director), she provides a well-informed but approachable depiction of dementia. In her words, ‘knowledge is a very good antidote to “dementia worry”’.
Central to Capp’s book is human experience: she interviews numerous people living with dementia, allowing readers to see the whole spectrum of the condition from early onset and mild symptoms to late-stage Alzheimer’s. Where Steve first noticed cognitive difficulties in his mid-fifties, Diana was diagnosed in her seventies; Jenni continues to live at home and has pivoted to writing children’s books after losing the capacity to work as a nurse; both Mabel and Jo have had to adjust to carer roles for relatives with dementia.
For all of these interviewees, support networks are essential. They preach the benefits of community involvement at local libraries and day centres, of combining engagement with the medical aged care system with regular social interaction and activities – whether that be yoga, dancing, meditation or time spent with the family dog. As Jenny puts it, ‘you have to find your own way’ – there is no clear way to manage dementia, but rather so many possibilities to continue leading a good life.
Evidently, Demystifying Dementia’s value lies in its proactive approach to dementia. Capp’s emphasis is on ‘supporting skills and capacities, rather than focusing on impairments and losses’, and although she acknowledges the tragic long-term consequences of dementia, she does not wallow in ‘dementia worry’.
This book is what patients diagnosed with dementia and their relatives need: a positive, honest handbook on what to do now.
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