Caregiving for a family member with dementia is a particularly challenging role, as the person’s ability to understand the world around them decreases over time. This creates many challenges, such as the need to take different approaches when talking to family members and looking for specialized games and activities for dementia suffers.
Caregivers face an emotional struggle too, watching a loved one withdraw from them. The process can be heart-wrenching and caregivers often grieve along the way.
While caregivers often love and feel sorry for their family members, understanding dementia at an emotional level isn’t instinctive. It’s easy to get lost in how the process affects you, especially as that is what you see on a day-to-day basis.
A Unique Perspective
One interesting way to get a glimpse into dementia is with a game that is currently in development called Before I Forget.
The game was highlighted in a recent article by Mark Serrels and offers a first-person narrative perspective into dementia. It uses visual tools to show how memory and understanding shifts and is lost. The video below shows a small sample of what the finished game should look like.
The game touches on powerful ideas, including the way that dementia suffers remember and then forget – and how they are trying so hard to understand a world that is slipping from their grasp.
Indeed, there is a desperation to dementia that often isn’t always obvious from the outside. Family members with dementia are experiencing their own grief and struggles. The frustrating experiences that caregivers are familiar with may be just as frustrating for dementia patients.
The idea with games like this one is simply to tell a story – a story that isn’t told often enough.
Stories like these can help to promote compassion. They may even help caregivers manage some of the challenges that they face on a daily basis. After all, many dementia behaviors feel intentional, even when that is not the case at all.
Leave a Reply