Dementia and Human Rights

Abstract

This book adopts a fresh approach by exploring dementia from a human rights perspective, thereby expanding the dementia debate. The main aim is to challenge thinking by interrogating policy and practice through a human rights lens. Dementia as an illness and a social construction lends itself well to critical analysis from this perspective, as people with dementia are probably one of the most marginalized and stigmatized social groups in the world. Yet careful consideration of their basic human rights is seldom undertaken, integrated into public policy on dementia and embedded in practice manuals/guidelines. Bringing together concepts such as human rights, disability, social inclusion, personhood, equality, participation, empowerment, autonomy and solidarity and applying a social constructionist lens, the book points to some of the gaps that exist between the rhetoric of public policy on dementia and the reality of peoples’ everyday lives and argues for the need to reframe policy and to reform practice. It provides a coherent and evidence based overview of the challenges dementia poses in primary care, in the community care sector and in long term residential care.