Words have great the potential to hurt, and hurtful words can also leave long lasting scars. As anyone who has followed me here for a few years, you will know I have written and spoken about it many times. I’ve even been plagiarised by a dementia consultant based in the UK, so some of what I ramble on about, must be quite useful…
My blog today, is to highlight the most recent dementia language guidelines I know of, published in 2020 by Dementia Singapore, who were at the time, called Alzheimer’s Disease Singapore. They are excellent, and a lot of thought has gone into them; people with dementia were also involved in working on them, and this really shows.
On the Dementia Singapore website page where you can find these guidelines, a number of fading scars have been embedded, which highlight brilliantly how hurtful words can be. I took some screen shots of them, but watching the impact of fading is very powerful, so please go to their website.
Read them, and more importantly, use them. Then share them with your family and friends, researchers, health care professionals, including doctors and nurses, advocacy organisations and colleagues.
Download the full Dementia Singapore language guidelines.
Below is a recording of a presentation I gave in Perth in 2014, on the power of language; you can also read the speech here.
