Designed with DeMEntia: Building Long-Lasting Collaborative Care

Dementia strips people of the unique attributes that form a person's identity, but it is suggested that how we relate to the world emotionally is one of the last things to escape us (Evans, 2001). Therefore, it is imperative to work within models of care that recognise and engage with how people living with dementia feel about things they are engaging with. In terms of emotional well-being, a diagnosis of dementia is also often accompanied by a sense of loss, a loss of purpose, a loss of value, and the loss of societal usefulness diminishing self-worth (Batsch and Mittelman, 2012). It is commonly recognised that people with a diagnosis of dementia are often written off by society long before their time (Katsuno, 2005). In addition to this, all too frequently people living with dementia underestimate themselves further contributing to a lack of self-belief, capacity, and esteem (Kinnaird, 2012).