Living well with dementia

Living well with dementia

It is important that people who are living with dementia are put at the centre of their care.  This means that everyone must be treated with compassion and respect in all stages of their life, at home, within the care setting and also in their wider communities. 

SDRC researchers across Scotland are working with people with dementia to understand what living well means for them. These insights are essential in creating good policy. For this reason, the SDRC promote putting those who live with dementia are the focus of policy making and ensuring their experiences and opinions are listened to and acted upon, consequently improving health and social care practice and services. 

In addition to the typical challenges that those living with dementia face, other comorbid conditions and later life changes can add difficulty and complexity to their lives. Therefore, researchers believe a holistic approach in understanding what ‘living well’ means for people with dementia, their families and their carers is key to ensuring they life the best life possible.

At the same time, researchers are not limiting their work into living well with dementia only to the health and social care setting.  They are also in the community more generally to increase public understanding of dementia and to tackle related inequalities. Such research aims to create a more dementia friendly society which is respectful and inclusive of people with dementia.

Currently, however, most research on ‘dementia friendly’ services only include those that have a formal diagnosis of dementia.  Therefore, in order to truly test  ‘dementia friendliness’ in Scotland researchers must also include the experiences of those are not yet diagnosed in their work.

Scottish dementia informatics platform

Fundamental science

Living well with dementia