I.  The Role of the Occupational Therapist in Dementia Care

1. Common Problems in Dementia

As people progress through dementia, they become more and more compromised in their ability to carry out basic and instrumental activities of daily living. 

• As their abilities decrease, they become less able to process and interpret environmental stimuli (including screening out irrelevant and attending to salient stimuli) and formulate an action plan that leads to successful task completion. 

• The frustrations of being unable to complete a requested or desired task can lead to behaviors that further interfere with the ability to complete the task, create a risk for safety, and disturb others who share the environment with the individual. 

• The inability to accurately interpret environmental stimuli can also lead to behaviors that interfere with task completion, safety, or disturb others. 

As Individuals with Dementia become increasingly demented, they commonly withdraw from engagement in meaningful occupations. 

• While not a new idea, modern society is just beginning to realize the importance of engagement in occupation to quality of life.  Humans are occupational beings and the lack of meaningful occupations has been associated with poor health, such as maladaptive behavior patterns, depression, and stress-related medical problems. (Wilcock, 1998).

• In those with dementia, an abundance of unstructured time can lead to increased behavior problems.  The key is to structure the environment, routines, and tasks so that they support the individual's ability to engage successfully in meaningful occupations.

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