Technology in the future

This optimistic section of the Royal Commission report does not specifically mention people with dementia. It refers to “technological aids which will enable people to live safely in their homes” (p 2), and stresses that the design of new housing should encompass technology to facilitate communication and tasks of everyday living. It also refers to the life-enhancing potential of technology. All of these aspirations can and should apply to technology for people with dementia. This chapter will consider how this can happen in practical terms as well as considering approaches to ethical concerns that can arise in the use of technology for a group of people who will not usually understand it. People with dementia make up the largest group in long-stay institutional care and, whether within institutions or living in the community, they are extremely vulnerable to forms of social exclusion. General communication is difficult, with misunderstandings and problems for many social groups in accepting people with dementia. While technological developments can be no replacement for a broader approach to inclusion in policy and practice terms, they can offer enabling support and assistance to people with dementia and their carers.

Dementia and negative attitudes

People with dementia struggle to be seen as people behind a frightening label. People who work with them are usually a long way from seeing dementia as ‘just another disability’ – to quote the City of Glasgow slogan (see below, page 128). This must be, in part, because of the stigma of any mental illness – especially one which is both very common (about 600,000 people in the UK have a diagnosis of dementia) and one which can strike anybody. The risk of dementia increases exponentially with age from about one in twenty at age 60 to about one in five at age 80, so our attitudes to it are related to attitudes to ageing. Indeed, the fear of dementia colours many people's personal attitude to ageing.