This email ” [DISAJP NEWS] Vol.18 ” is sent to those who subscribe to DISA NEWS, the news letter from the Dementia improvement support Association of Japan.
We distribute the new letter on the 4th of each month to all the subscribers for delivering valuable information,
aiming to achieve zero dementia patients in the world.
【The contents of today’s mail magazine】
〇 How to make it through dementia care
〇 Caregiver murders caused twice a week in Japan
〇 Ichikai model , an initiative for everyone to ameliorate dementia
〇 How to make it through dementia care
One of the troubles you would face when you take care of your family member
who developed dementia must be confusion or upset on how to treat and live with him
because he is no longer able to do what he used to do and you have to keep your eyes on him all the time.
・ To understand
Before doing this and that, calm yourself down and try to understand how the world looks for him,
which can make it easier for you to accept his behaviors and give him proper care.
Today we introduce some typical symptoms and characteristics of dementia,
which are hopefully informative for you.
・Respect for person
Before going into the point,
we have to reconfirm the very principle that we need to respect the value and life of each person living with dementia when we take care of him.
Try to understand the way how he sees the world and be mindful of his unique view.
See the person more objectively although he is very close to you,
then a problem that bothered you so hard might turn into something lighter or even funny.
Try not to make the person feel the gap between his view and “the reality”,
for both of you and him to live with self-respect and ease of mind.
Sometimes you need to lie to go along the person’s story.
Sometimes you need to go against your will.
From those acceptance of how he sees and feels comes positive consequences of less confusion and burden and better caregiving.
Just accept how he sees and feels, then you get less confusion and burden and better way for caregiving.
[More understanding on the behaviors for less stress]
– Out of one’s memory means not fact
Sometimes your loved one doesn’t accept the fact no matter how much you explain.
This is because it’s not a fact for him, as it has slipped out of his memory.
Memory impairment, one of the most typical symptoms of dementia, has three characters.
— The first one is decline of the ability to recall what he experienced.
People with dementia often repeat same stories over and over again right after talking or hearing those stories.
Unfortunately, your respectful response won’t help them remember that they already have.
If you feel it stressful to hear the story, take it easy and you can parry or ignore what he says, because he doesn’t remember what he talked anyway.
— The second is complete loss of a whole episode from memory.
Forgetfulness also happens to healthy people, but you can easily recall with some hints or clues.
In contrast, people with dementia have a whole thing out of their memory.
That’s why your loved one feels as if you are giving false information to him against the fact that you are actually telling a truth.
Don’t take it too serious or push him to remember, just let him say as he wants.
If he says he wants a meal right after dinner,
take it in stride saying “Wait a minute, I’m cooking now!” rather than trying to make him recall he already had.
— The third is the retrograde nature of the memory impairment.
People with dementia lose memory from the newest to the oldest. The loss goes backward from the present to the past.
The freshest memory is lost entirely, not partially.
If the loss goes back 30 years, well before he started to live in the present house, he must feel like he is living in a strange house now.
In his memory, family members’ faces are much younger.
The closer the person is, the more sad when you can’t share the same good memory with him anymore or he can’t recognize your face.
In those cases, just remember this nature. It should make it easier to understand and accept the person’s behaviors.
– Outright expression to the closest person
Despite their usual helplessness and unreasonable behaviors, most people with dementia often show incredibly good communication with doctors or visitors.
You should be disappointed that no one else knows your struggle taking care of him.
The exact reason of this inconsistency is not clear. You may need to accept it regarding it as expression of dependence and trust on you.
– Stubborn refusal of uncomfortable thing
Sometimes your loved one shows aggressive response stubbornly refusing to admit something against him, and you are forced to talk back.
It is very natural that you feel anger when what he say doesn’t make sense at all.
This kind of behavior may be instinctive self-defense that appears when he can’t face his own decline.
More argument will only make you swayed, so don’t take it seriously and fend off his words.
– Symptoms appearing like a mottled pattern
At the very early stage, the symptoms emerge in normality.
Quite naturally, you are confused because you have no idea on
if the person’s unreasonable behaviors are caused by dementia or not. In this case,
maybe you can feel easier if you regard the behavior as a symptom of dementia rather than being hung up on making a clear distinction.
– Emotion remaining after forgetting
People with dementia easily lose their memory, but they can keep the specific emotions even after the memories are gone.
Keeping following things in mind will help you give nice and peaceful care and your person can keep good feeling.
· Give positive words such as “Well done! ”, “Thank you!” etc. as much as possible
· Show agreement saying “I know”, “That’s too bad” etc.
· Add gentle words to usual conversation such as “That’s good!”, “I’m happy for you!” etc.
· Say sorry for what is not your fault, accept what is not true or tell an innocent lie to have the person relieved
Remember your loved one says what is true for him. Your denial only keeps the confusion and makes you exhausted.
Parry what he says not to offend his feelings.
– Strong adhesion hard to give up
People with dementia become more rigid when they are refused to do what they want or persuaded to do different way.
Although a solution depends, you may want to draw following things.
Let’s try that one.
· Frustration or doubt that the person feels when he is refused or denied may appear in another occasion with another expression.
Consider if there is another cause of stress except what he is sticking to right now.
Let’s try that 2.
· Adhesion can get stronger if you take it too seriously and you always try everything to avoid it.
You can change your attitude to let it go as long as it is not critical.
Let’s try that 3.
· Sometimes a characteristic of the disease that a patient can talk normally with someone not so close.
If you are talking about money, he may accept your intension if you have it explained by a bank officer.
Let’s try that 4.
· You can make the person’s focus to another thing rather than trying to persuade.
You can suggest to do what they like, give some favorite food or talk about good old days.
Let’s try that 5.
· Family members can feel it awkward and uncomfortable to neighbors when the person begins to wander around or have delusions.
If your neighbors understand the situation, you can avoid too much limitation on outing or heavy dose.
Don’t hesitate to explain what is happening so that the neighbors can understand and show kindness to you and your person.
Let’s try that 6.
· If he takes all the letters away, you can pick up important mails before he find them and let him take the rest.
Search for another solution before you restrain his habit. It may be a bother,
but it should be a realistic bargain to avoid more pain.
Let’s try that 7.
· If the person remembers vividly when he searched desperately for his kid who got lost long time ago,
that must be the reason why he repeatedly feels like walking alone.
Knowing his past and imagine how he feels can help you come up with an idea on how to deal with the problem.
Let’s try that 8.
· Generally, a dementia symptom turns into another within 6 month to a year.
It will make you totally exhausted if you try to eliminate every single symptom from the bottom up.
You can let it go as it goes away anyway and take your mind off your tension.
– Tough attitude incurring strong reaction
If your attitude is too strict, the person will give you aggressive reactions. Keep in mind the north wind and the sun story.
– More knowledge for better understanding
You can understand most of the behaviors of your loved one if you keep in mind the characteristics of dementia,
and even better if you know his past. Good understanding on why he behaves as he does makes it easier to accept him.
Then, symptoms will be ameliorated.
– Faster aging to eventual period
People with dementia get old two or three times faster than those who are healthy.
Most caregivers say taking care is hard because their people are so energetic,
but remember the energy doesn’t keep up forever.
〇 Caregiver murders caused once every two weeks in Japan
According to a research by NHK (Japan’s national media) on 138 cases of caregiver murder reported in 6 years from 2010 to 2015, this type of murder occurs once every two weeks in Japan.
(‘I want my mother to die.’ Murder in the Family and Confessions of the Parties Published by NHK Special News-gathering Group Shinchosha on October 20, 2017)
They succeed in detailed report on 77 cases, which showed surprising research outcome on the duration from the beginning to the murder as below:
Duration (years) / Number of cases
10 or more / 15
5 to 10 / 16
1 to 5 / 26
1 or less / 20
Also, three fourths of the victims were users of nursing service such as day care facilities.
You may think longer duration means more exhaustion or nursing service can relieve the burden.
However, caregivers with short duration must be unfamiliar to what they do and awfully confused,
and those who used nursing service might have been considered to be less serious than reality.
In any case, there is a tendency in court that the longer the duration is, the lesser sentence a suspect gets.
At the early stage, any caregiver is shocked to see the difference of the loved one and gets horribly anxious
about the future without knowing who can give him advice on what to do.
The most common case was domestic femicide, which accounts for almost 40%, while the ones with female suspects including 20 wives,
15 daughters, 9 mothers, 3 sisters and 1 grandchild account for only about 30% in total.
What made them kill their loved ones?
Interviewed caregivers who committed these sad crimes are all good people with much love to their families.
“It was beyond my limit.” “I couldn’t make her living in the way she never wanted.
” “Every day she said she want me to kill her. Eventually, all I thought was carrying it out for her.”
These are the words by those people.
“Of course, I know I did very bad thing. But I couldn’t see any other choice at that time.”
What is the difference between those who were pushed out to the crime and those who were able to hold back?
Unfortunately, there seems to be no clear-cut answer to this question.
One thing that is for sure is anyone can fall into such a catastrophe without a glimmer of hope.
Our association has provided a wide range of inspiring campaigns to change desperations causing those tragedies into hopes,
as well as conducting physiological researches to improve cognitive functions can be recovered.
Particularly, we’ve been offering a reishi supplement for continual ingestion to ameliorate dementia’s peripheral symptoms
and stop microcirculation’s decline responsible for dementia and lifestyle-related diseases.
Thorough this program, we ingenerate more smiles and happiness in caregiving often perceived as harsh or miserable.
〇 Ichikai model , an initiative for everyone to ameliorate dementia
The ultimate way to prevent caregiver murders is curing dementia.
Of course approaches to euthanasia or social security issues are important as the media covers,
but as long as aged people can live independently managing to handle their deterioration, no one suffers such tragedies.
Ichikai model is a community vitalization project we promote.
We believe the very basic of people’s health is to eat nutritious food made with local ingredients produced by the regional soil and weather.
In the Ichikai model, the residents of Ichikai town grow reishi,
which contributes a lot to improvement of cognitive functions,
and process them into a supplement with the unique technique developed
by the Society of Restoration-of-Health Medicine and the Microcirculation Laboratory.
The residents can eat what they produced themselves to keep their health.
Because we make the product from the ingredient in the same city,
we can control the cost and offer them to the residents at affordable price.
At the same time, we’ve been promoting the reishi production as a new local industry
that brings incomes and employment.
Some people with dementia who showed violent behaviors as peripheral symptoms are reported to become gentle and peace after taking Kouka.
Another person, who had been suffering from depression,
began to go out and perform farm chores, and still another recovered well enough to go overseas to meet an old friend.
We also have a very positive feedback from a person
whose mother had been suffering from auditory and visual hallucinations,
saying that those symptoms disappeared and now she and her family have happier days.
Smiles in families are our joy and drive.
We are very happy to be committed to this rewarding work
for realizing zero dementia communities one by one to bring more smiles in societies.
Our hope in 2019 is to see a community achieve zero dementia by recovering cognitive functions.
We believe taking reishi in proper manner is crucial for normalizing microcirculation, which highly contributes to that recovery.
We hope this information reaches many people
as possible to stop tragedies such as caregiver murders or fatal accidents by the elderly.
We deliver further information at the official website, so please check it out.
We distribute valuable information on the 4th of each month to the world for reducing suffer of dementia. We welcome your feedback.
You can purchase our reishi supplement Kouka for improving cognitive functions at ” Dis Shop ” .
