Dementia Care ─ A Practical Manual

Dementia can be a distressing condition, for the sufferer, and for families and other carers. Management of dementia is never easy, and involves facing some unpleasant problems and difficult choices. The right approach and expertise can minimise the unpleasantness and make dementia manageable, while inexperienced or inexpert management has the potential to cause unnecessary distress and disability, mis-directed resources, frustrated care staff, unduly long periods spent in hospital and premature care home placement.

Dementia Care is a practical manual for health and sociacare professionals in their encounters with people with dementia. It covers a wide range of information in a short, easily-accessible handbook format and broadly follows the journey of a person with dementia from first presentation to health or social services, through problems and their management, to the final stages of the illness. The book is rooted in the extensive experience of the authors in managing dementia in the community, in hospital and care homes and hopes to make the necessary expertise available and accessible in a form that will be useful to the whole range of medical, health and social care staff looking after people with dementia and their families.

Jonathan Waite graduated from Edinburgh University in Pharmacology (1973) and Medicine (1976). He has specialised in Psychiatry since 1977. After working as a junior doctor in Edinburgh he came to Nottingham in 1981, since 1984 he has been a full time NHS Consultant in the Psychiatry of Old Age.
In 2001 he gained a degree in Mental Health Law from the University of Northumbria; he is Lord Chancellor's Medical Visitor for the Midlands and East Anglia and contributed to the BMA / Law Society book Assessment of Mental Capacity. He has a wide interest in Psychiatry of Old Age and has published research on the epidemiology and treatment of dementia, the provision of services and on legal aspects of psychiatry.
Ian Morton graduated in Philosophy from Newcastle University in 1978 before undertaking Mental Health Nurse Training at the Bethlem and Maudsley Hospitals. Since qualifying in 1985 he has worked with people who have dementia in day Care, hospital and residential settings. He has researched and published extensively on interpersonal aspects of dementia care, with a growing interest in the psychodynamic aspects of dementia, care and the organisational aspects of care. Rowan Harwood trained in general medicine and geriatrics in Oxford, London and Nottingham, and in epidemiology at the London School of Hygiene. He developed a special interest in stroke, and has published on health outcomes and quality of life after stroke. He is a consultant physician and lead clinician for stroke at the Queens Medical Centre in Nottingham, and he maintains a wide service and research interest in the field, including continence, psychiatry and institutional care. David Connelly graduated from University of Ulster with a First Class Honours degree in Applied Psychology in 1995 before completing a Psych.D in Clinical Psychology at the University of Surrey. He currently works as a Clinical Psychologist for Nottinghamshire Healthcare NHS Trust.