A non-pharmaceutical care approach at ADN

We don’t manage and suppress the signs and symptoms of Dementia through medication, interfering with the alertness of the brain. So no medication to sedate someone, to “calm them down, make them zombie like” just so we can work with them… to make it easier for “us”.

We want to see the person in his/her “raw” form. As an individual, still a beloved person in his/her own right. We believe to care for our Dementia family with love, respect and ample patience to get to the root cause of an unmet need.

A person living with Dementia already struggles to find words/can’t communicate withwords, but still experience being cold, having pain, is thirsty… but don’t have the words to communicate that. Then they become so-called “aggressive”. Mothers don’t rush to a Medical Professional to give her baby anti-psychotics just because her baby is crying, she
finds out what the reason is (an unmet need) and ensure it’s being fulfilled. The same with a person living with Dementia (PLWD)!

We do, however, strongly focus on medication for good health, for example for the management of pain, diabetics, blood pressure, heart problems, arthritis, etc… We also use a certain tool to establish if someone has pain, and the level of pain and then work with our Dr and medical team on how to manage that pain.

So our sole focus is to care with love, not drugs.

With this documented non-pharmaceutical care approach and journey we’ve had/still have, with Ria, is what we do at ADN. There is an ocean of knowledge between diagnosis and caring of a person living with Dementia. With diagnosis usually medications are prescribed we see the effect of it on the person, so the symptoms they then show are usually the effects of the medication and not Dementia symptoms (unstable on their feet, not sleeping, incontinence, so called aggression, not being able to talk/communicate, being zombie like). In the later stages of Dementia, one would see incontinence, immobility and eventually the inability to swallow (dysphagia), due to the loss of brain function.