Supporting People with Dementia: Understanding and Responding to Distressed Behaviour

Dementia is one of the most important issues we face as professionals. Staff describe distressed behaviour as their greatest source of workplace stress when supporting people with dementia. Knowing about a person's individual history underpinned with evidence-based knowledge can make it much easier to interpret the behaviour of people with dementia. Understanding the meaning behind a person's behaviour can be difficult, but with practice and experience it becomes easier. It can sometimes be tempting to avoid a situation where a person is experiencing stress and becoming distressed for fear of making things worse. Unfortunately, this usually leads to more severe distressing behaviour later on. By increasing your learning about stress and distress, you will be able to support people with dementia in a more compassionate and professional way. Please note that the language used in DSDC publications is correct at the time of print; recommendations for dementia friendly language is updated on a regular basis and therefore from time to time some language in DSDC publications may be out of date.