06/17/2025
People living with dementia should be recognized and appreciated for the person they still are—at Homewatch, it’s one of our core beliefs. But our culture and media tend to paint a narrow picture of the condition that's only sad and tragic. As dementia advocate Rev. Lynn Casteel Harper writes here, we need new stories:
“There are indeed losses and suffering associated with dementia, experiences that confound and aggrieve… [But] turning a multidimensional phenomenon into a story of unidirectional decline and disappearance, reinforces stigma around cognitive disability…I have seen up close that dementia is not just a decline unto death. It can also involve ascendant humor, compassion and connections beyond the strictly rational. It’s important for us to talk about it, to tell stories about it, to write books and make movies about it. But we need new ways to do so. The good news is that other approaches are emerging, stories that offer multifaceted depictions of dementia, situating the condition and those it affects back on the spectrum of human experience.”
You can read the full article here (please note the paywall):
The tragic narrative sounds different depending on who’s telling it.
