A Clinician's Guide to Successful Evaluation and Treatment of Dementia

A complete guide to evaluating and treating dementia!

This book was written for SLPs, OTs, PTs, and Psych Therapists because of considerable uncertainty "out in the field" regarding how to evaluate and treat persons with dementia. Therapeutic techniques selected often do not take the person's diagnosis and staging into mind. Subsequently, this can lead to pessimism regarding the efficacy of doing therapy with persons with dementia. In order to extensively address evaluation and therapeutic questions, several experts in the field of dementia were invited to submit chapters to allow for in-depth discussions.

Topics include:

• Types & Stages of Dementia
• Assessment & Evaluations
• Pharmacology
• Therapeutic Interventions Including Everyday Routines & Care Partners
• Direct Cognitive Therapy Techniques
• Best Practices

The structure of this book consists of three parts:

1. Part I is foundational and addresses items such as obtaining the exact diagnosis, staging the person, and considering the various memory systems all in the context of appropriate treatment planning.
2. Part II focuses on evaluation techniques. Test instruments and evaluation techniques specific to identifying frontal lobe disorders and the specific stage of the dementia are reviewed. Included in this discussion are the Global Deterioration Scale and the Allen Cognitive Levels and how these two cognitive tools can assist in managing clients with dementia and how they help in matching specific treatments with specific stages of deterioration. In addition, there is discussion of medications and how each specifically affects cognitive behavior.
3. Part III discusses evidence-based interventions including use of routines, environmental adaptations, utilizing preserved procedural memory abilities, behavioral memory techniques like spaced retrieval and errorless learning, Montessori-based dementia training and program implementation strategies. Throughout this text the authors stress the importance of using evidence-based interventions and how doing this can lead to predictable and positive outcomes.