How to care for elderly relatives suffering from memory disorders.

If an elderly relative with memory disorders lives with you, you need to know that memory impairment and behavior changes are a manifestation of a disease that needs and can be treated!

Treatment is an indispensable condition that allows you to avoid serious difficulties in living together. Elderly patients with mental illnesses and memory disorders most often cannot provide themselves with the necessary vital needs: nutrition, hygiene, safety, etc. The elderly patient himself, suffering from a mental disorder, can no longer function independently and the people caring for him will have to take care of everything.

Modern treatment of memory disorders can restore partial self-care abilities to most patients and restore emotional balance to themselves and their loved ones.

Here are some simple tips to facilitate communication with an elderly patient with memory disorders, which allow you to achieve a better understanding and result:

1. Give precise instructions in simple, short phrases.
2. It is necessary to strive for a caring, but at the same time confident and clear tone in the treatment of patients.
3. Important information must be repeated, preferably several times and asked again, checking the correctness of understanding.
4. It is necessary to constantly help the patient in remembering specific data concerning time, dates, places and names.
5. Be patient with the patient and give him time (minutes, not seconds) for a reaction or response.
6. Pointless discussions should be avoided. Instead of insisting on your opinion, you need to distract the patient or make concessions yourself.
7. It is better to avoid responding to reproaches and reproaches from the patient.
8. Praise can achieve more than criticism.

With the correct behavior of the patient, praise can be expressed with words, a touch or a smile.

For proper organization of care, it is necessary to take care of:

• about the immutability of the patient's daily routine;
• proper nutrition and sufficient fluid intake, as well as regular movement;
• about the stimulation of mental activity, even if only joint participation in simple games;
• on timely diagnosis and treatment of concomitant diseases;
• about the safety of the patient's place of permanent residence - about the cleanliness of the patient's body, bed and clothes;
• about enough sleep.

Do not forget about yourself. Your well-being is extremely important both for yourself and for the patient. In his life you are irreplaceable, without you the patient does not know what to do. This is a serious reason to take care of yourself.

Head of the Organizational and Methodological Department GUZ "Lipetsk Regional Neuropsychiatric Hospital"
Dmitrenkov 
Sergey Ivanovich