Main description:

This interdisciplinary book offers a relational perspective to dementia care drawing on attachment theory and practice. Relevant to professionals and the general public alike, it brings together innovative research and practice in psychotherapy and the creative arts with the lived experience of being a carer. Indeed, the book includes insights from professional and personal experience throughout. It also provides exclusive access to Josh Appignanesi's short film, Ex Memoria, about his grandmother's experience of dementia, poignantly portrayed by Sara Kestelman. Chapters include the experience of caring for a sister with dementia; the importance of an attachment perspective in theory and practice; a new approach to understanding the possible origins of dementia in trauma; contemporary understandings from clinical and research arenas; the description of a leading-edge project providing psychotherapeutic work; and an innovative creative arts and reminiscence European-wide family intervention for those living with dementia.

Written in accessible language, Dementia: An Attachment Approach will be of great interest to people living with dementia, as well as those working with, and caring for, people with dementia in a variety of contexts including nurses, doctors and psychiatrists, clinical and counselling psychologists, social workers, health and social care workers, family carers and psychotherapists, as well as creative arts practitioners and policymakers.

Contents:

Contributors

Introduction: Setting the Scene

Angela Cotter

Reflections on the Film Ex Memoria (2006)

Josh Appignanesi

Poetry

Sara Kestelman

An Attachment Approach to Understanding and Living Well with Dementia

Kate White

Contemporary Understanding of the Aetiology, Diagnosis and Treatment Approaches in Relation to Dementia

Susie M. D. Henley

Shadow of Loss Hypothesis - Could Attachment be the Missing Link in Dementia Research?

Sir Richard Bowlby

Dementia: Childhood Attachment and Loss

Jane Sherwood

The Role of Reminiscence Groups in the Care of People with Dementia and their Families
Pam Schweitzer

My Sister, Disappearing

Hazel Leventhal

Therapeutic Work with People with Dementia using an Attachment, Psychoanalytic and Person-Centred Approach: The Talking Therapies Project, a Department of Health and Age UK Initiative

Anastasia Patrikiou

Reflections on Exploring Attachment, Memory Loss and Ageing: A Conference held on 20th Sept 2014

Valerie Sinason