Dementia Awareness
Being aware of dementia is really important. So I feel I should never complain about the amount of dementia related news that we see every day. My complaint, when I have one, is about the quality of what is pushed out. After all, it was once the case that no one ever talked about dementia. It was a terrible secret. Students didn’t even get told very much about it in their training to be doctors, nurses, social workers, or any of the other professionals who were going to meet people with dementia all the time at work. But journalists talking nonsense about it is really annoying.
How does it happen? Partly it is about the way “news” is generated and filtered. It’s not just that newspaper editors and controllers of radio and TV outlets have control over what we do and don’t see. There is also the wild numbers of bloggers, and vloggers, and social media influencers who send information or entertainment (or “infotainment”) to us every hour of every day. When anyone or any organisation gets control of a channel, they can push a theory, or a story, beyond the point where is has any connection with reality.
Why would this matter for dementia? Why do I complain when every aspect of life is subject to the same forces? Well, I see an ethical issue about the effect that it all has on people with dementia and those who love and care for them. If the prevailing news is that there’s a cure round the corner, false hopes are raised. If the Sunday colour supplements are full of stories of people with dementia on adventure holidays, it marginalises those people who are caring for someone who can scarcely leave the house. Manipulating the feelings of exhausted people isn’t fair and it isn’t nice. But for many vested interested organisations and businesses, any increased profile is a good opportunity. I think we need a debate about this. Let’s talk about the news.
