It’s World Alzheimer’s Day everyone! It takes place every year on the 21st of September during World Alzheimer’s Month. The theme this year is ‘Know dementia, know Alzheimer’s’. The Alzheimer’s Society (https://www.alzheimers.org.uk/) is encouraging everyone to learn more about dementia, so we thought we’d spend some time explaining how and why speech therapists work with people with dementia.
Dementia is a broad term that groups together a number of conditions that affect the brain. As well as Alzheimer’s, there’s lots of other types of dementia that speech and language therapists work with. For example, vascular dementia or Primary Progressive Aphasia. Speech and language therapists can be an important part of the multi-disciplinary team in assessing and diagnosing some of these conditions. To find out more about the different types of dementia, check out https://www.alzheimers.org.uk/about-dementia/types-dementia.
Speech and language therapists work with people with dementia for 2 main reasons. The first being eating, drinking and swallowing difficulties or ‘Dysphagia’. Dysphagia is a common complication of dementia, especially in the later stages. Signs of dysphagia to look out for are dribbling food or drink from the mouth, difficulty chewing, food left over in the mouth after swallowing, holding food or drink in the mouth and coughing or choking. Swallowing difficulties can lead to problems, such as chest infections and weight loss. Speech therapists can assess, diagnose and give advice to manage swallowing difficulties.
If you are interested in training around dysphagia and dementia, then please do not hesitate to contact us here.
The second reason that speech therapists work with people with dementia is for communication difficulties. Communication difficulties are extremely common for people with dementia. Signs of communication difficulties include:
- Word-finding difficulties
- Reduced use of spoken words
- Putting words in the wrong order
- Using the wrong word e.g. spoon instead of knife
- Repeating words
- Trouble following conversations or instructions
- Trouble holding a conversation
- Becoming very frustrated or withdrawn
Speech therapists can help people with dementia and the people they communicate with to come up with ways and strategies to communicate more effectively. This might be help with finding words, setting up a more ‘communication friendly’ environment or using AAC (alternative and augmentative communication) tools, like a visual choice board.
If you are interested in getting help with communication difficulties and dementia or training on this topic, then please contact us here.
