People with Dementia, Contributing to Learning and Teaching in Higher Education: Innovative Practice

Patients and service users have a well-established role in teaching and learning on professional qualifying programmes such as such as social work and nursing. However, the role of people with dementia in contributing to educational initiatives at higher educational level remains under explored. Four people with dementia were recruited as Expert by Lived Experience Tutors for the Foundation Degree in Dementia Studies at a University in the United Kingdom. They met students regularly to support their learning. We were interested in researching whether and how this enhanced the ability of students to enable people to live well with dementia. However, we also discovered that the initiative gave insight into psychosocial aspects of dementia, and a new opportunity to explore personhood, co-production and social citizenship. That is the focus of this article

'It would be easier if she’d died’: young people with parents with dementia articulating inadmissible stories

In the U.K. context where the emphasis is (quite rightly) on living well with dementia, on positivity and enabling approaches, it can be difficult for researchers to investigate and report negative experiences. Failing to re-present perceptions and experiences as they are lived, however, does a serious disservice to the research endeavor and can prevent policy and service development and positive change. In this article, we present some stories told by participants in an Alzheimer’s Society (United Kingdom) Funded project uniquely investigating the perceptions and experiences of children and young people who have a parent with dementia. Sometimes the stories were not easy to hear, especially when they challenged dominant master narratives around dementia. We discuss our view that when the young people we spoke with told us how things were for them, we were ethically bound to respect and disseminate their accounts

Dementia: beyond disorders of mood

This editorial will present the growing argument in the research literature that mood disorders, as defined by psychiatric diagnostic criteria, do not well serve individuals with dementia. This is important because anxiety and depression are our most used and most influential ways of understanding a highly prevalent and personally important experience in dementia: emotion. As such, there is a need to review how the disorders are currently conceptualised since they may have limited applicability for individuals with dementia, and consider what alternatives there might be. Agitation is offered as a lesson in how imprecise descriptions of behaviour can exclude the internal world of people with dementia. In our research to explore how the emotional experiences of individuals with dementia are understood, we consider what might lie beyond disorders of mood

Interventions that support the creation of dementia friendly environments in health care : protocol for a realist review

© 2016 Handley et al. Open Access This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise statedImproving health-care outcomes for people living with dementia when they are admitted to hospital is a policy priority. Dementia friendly interventions in health care promote inclusion of patients and carers in decision-making and adapt practices and environments to be appropriate to the needs of people with cognitive impairment. While there has been a wealth of activity, the number of studies evaluating interventions is limited, and the majority focuses on reporting staff and organisational outcomes. By focusing on patient and carer outcomes, this review will aim to develop an explanatory account of how and in what circumstances dementia friendly environments in health care work for people living with dementia and with what outcomesPeer reviewe

Rights in mind: Thinking differently about dementia and disability

The aim of this paper is to argue for the utility of a relational model of disability, as a way of conceptualizing dementia. We explore whether dementia should be considered as a disability, and whether people with dementia might consider themselves as disabled people. We review examples of, and issues raised by, the political activism of people with dementia. We consider how language constructs dementia negatively. We discuss how the environment influences the experience of dementia. In conclusion, we show that a relational model of dementia lays the basis for a human rights approach to the condition, based on collaborative partnerships between people with dementia and people from other disability communities

What determines cell size?

AbstractFirst paragraph (this article has no abstract) For well over 100 years, cell biologists have been wondering what determines the size of cells. In modern times, we know all of the molecules that control the cell cycle and cell division, but we still do not understand how cell size is determined. To check whether modern cell biology has made any inroads on this age-old question, BMC Biology asked several heavyweights in the field to tell us how they think cell size is controlled, drawing on a range of different cell types. The essays in this collection address two related questions - why does cell size matter, and how do cells control it

Rainfall partitioning, tree form and measurement scale: a comparison of two co-occurring, morphologically distinct tree species in a semi-arid environment

Article first published online: 13 JAN 2014Abstract not availableBrooke A Swaffer, Kate L Holland, Tanya M Doody and John Hutso