The vulnerable population is becoming a more and more serious challenge for the healthcare and medical spheres. The world faces the problem of human aging, and it causes an increase in the risk of mental diseases. Despite technological advances, there is still no treatment for personality disorders. One of the most widespread illnesses of the elderly is dementia. It is described by a continuous decline in cognitive activity with the loss to some extent of previously acquired knowledge and practical skills and difficulty or inability to learn new ones. The purpose of this paper is to describe the ways of supporting older people with dementia with the use of several strategies. It is possible to aid the elderly by providing direct care, reducing the level of their stress, organizing their schedule, and establishing national governmental programs.
For a person with a mental disease, it is hard to perceive reality in the appropriate way. There are many issues that are stressful for people with dementia but ordinary for others. This is the reason why understanding the way of thinking of an older person is so crucial. First of all, they face the problem of getting access to medical aid. Not all of them live in specialized organizations or are being looked after by a caregiver or a nurse. A new way of contacting the hospital should be provided. It should be taken into consideration that for people with dementia, it is difficult to leave the house, not to mention medical facilities.
What is more, medicine and drugs for dementia are expensive. Older adults with the mental disease are disabled, and the pension is not enough to cover all the expenses concerning the illness. There is no special governmental program to support them financially and psychologically. It is also important to mention that to make the disease progress slower, it is necessary to attend special classes and to work with the psychiatrist. The hypothetical counseling program might be focused on opening several centers with free activities for people with personality disorders.
Mental disorders are among those diseases that hardly can be treated. One of the most common situations that are likely to develop problems for older people with dementia is asking for help. Depending on the level of progress of the illness, the human does not remember the number, cannot find the telephone, or forget the process of the conversation. However, there is a solution to this problem – all people who have such a diagnosis should be provided with the tracker on their hands. It looks like a bracelet or a wristwatch; and works in a very efficient way. Once a person with dementia needs some aid, he or she should only press the button on this gadget. In accordance with the circumstances, it might give a signal to the family members or the healthcare workers. The lack of physical activity is another urgent issue that has to be solved. There is the special equipment for passive exercises that have a positive impact on the propulsion system of a person (Heesterbeek et al., 2019). They should be available in medical centers and hospitals for free.
The situation that cannot be solved in the present moment is the lack of professional communication between a person with a mental disease and a psychologist. As a way to overcome this difficulty, it may be proposed to create a series of exercises for older adults so that they could maintain their skills of communication. Moreover, there might be organized a voluntary center: students, pupils, or even adults after a short educational session might visit people with dementia in their spare time to have a little conversation or to help with some household responsibilities.
First of all, a particular governmental program is needed, for example, a department of client service has to be developed. It would be helpful both as a counseling community and as a supervising authority. The collaboration with the art therapy centers would be very efficient for the elderly, especially if there would be a possibility to do it online without the stress of leaving the house (Cornejo et al., 2016). What is more, the government should provide robotic gadgets to make the life of people with dementia more comfortable (Ienca et al., 2016). This technological device would play the role of the assistant for older people.
At the present moment, I am already carrying, and I can control myself in stressful situations. I am empathic, but at the same time, I am able to be objective when it is needed; I am always ready to give a helping hand. From my point of view, I am facing a lack of managing skills like responsibility, patience, and the ability to evaluate risks.
I plan to improve my managing skills by ameliorating my theoretical knowledge of the issue. I would try to train to take care of my parents or other relatives as it is supposed to be done in the specialized center. I would pay more attention to my own well-being as “the first step in developing self-responsibility relates to care of the self” (Morrison-Valfre, 2016, p. 82). I would read more about the types of mental diseases and the ways of its treatment.
References
Cornejo, R., Brewer, R., Edasis, C., & Piper, A. M. (2016). Vulnerability, sharing, and privacy: Analyzing art therapy for older adults with dementia. Proceedings of the 19th ACM Conference on Computer-Supported Cooperative Work & Social Computing, 16(1), 1572-1583. Web.
Heesterbeek, M., van Der Zee, E. A., & van Heuvelen, M. J. G. (2019). Feasibility of three novel forms of passive exercise in a multisensory environment in vulnerable institutionalized older adults with dementia. Journal of Alzheimer’s Disease, 70(1), 681-690. Web.
Ienca, M., Jotterand, F., Vică, C., & Elger, B. (2016). Social and assistive robotics in dementia care: Ethical recommendations for research and practice. International Journal of Social Robotics, 8(4), 565-573. Web.
Morrison-Valfre, M. (2016). Foundations of mental health care – E-Book. Elsevier Health Sciences.