Do You Think It Is Ok to Lie to a Dementia Patient?
Saturday, August 28th, 2010 at
5:51 am
nickname asked:
Say you have a realative with dementia and everytime you visit they are happy but at the end ask if you are coming back tomorrow you know you cant but when you say no they get really upset and it takes 3 workers to hold them down, but if you lie and say yes, they are fine. But the thing is they probably wont remember the conversation, what would you do, is it ok to lie in this case?
Tagged with: dementia • Dementia Patient
Filed under: Alzheimers
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Yes in this case. With dementia comes frustration, sometimes depression and cofusing. Anything to ease their minds would be ok.
I know one lady with dementia who always would pack her bags and head to the train station for “her trip home.” She would get aggressive if tried to be stopped or talked out of it. However, if we told her the train was on schedule and would be arriving 3 hours from now, she could wait with us at the nursing home, she would cheer up and relax for a while. This was the only way to get her to relax, otherwise she would walk around with heavy nags and her coat on asking everyone for directions.
No, it’ not ok to lie to a dementia patient
Have you tried just answering with a cheerful ” I’ll be back”? I think it would be okay to say yes if you can’t get around the question any other way because it’s obvious the person could harm themselves if they become too upset. Whatever it takes to insure the patients safety is the best way to handle a question like that, even if it means telling a lie.
Yes, I think that in some circumstances it is OK to do so in order to spare them distress. When my grandmother’s husband became senile with Altzheimers he was very much in the moment. He’d happily point out the railing or walkway or whatever at the nursing home that he and “his crew” had built. He was reliving the days he was a foreman at the railroad. He was happy as a clam. We’d take Grandmother to see him about once a week, something that made him happy. But he had no short term memory and wouldn’t remember even the next day he’d seen her. When she died we did not tell him. By then the information would have confused him more than anything, and it would have upset him when he was generally happy and amiable. In this case, if he did ask about her, we said she was fine, just got sick and couldnt’ come this weekend. We did so to make the time he had left as stress free and enjoyable as possible.
You don’t have to lie in order to keep them calm. Find a way to assure them you’ll be back without being specific about the date. You’re right to want to spare them from being agitated. It’s really great that you’re taking the time to visit.
I think so. If you are preventing them from further heartache. My grandfather didn’t realise his wife was dead (she’d died 30 years previously) and he constantly asked where she was. At first we told him the truth but then he always got very distressed and 20 mins later would ask the same question again. So we used to say she’d popped to the shops and he was able to accept that and it didn’t cause him any distress.
Yes.My grandmother was like this after her stroke.I had to look after her day and night for 13 months and she was stark,raving mad.You have to lie to them.It’s the only way to remotely get them to calm down.They won’t remember.Do what you have to.
Say something like “Of course, we’ll come back as soon as we can”
I worked as an LPN in nusring homes for 10 years, and I often would go along with a patient to keep them from getting upset. One lady would ask if I’d feed the chickens and the pigs, and I told her I had. She thought she was on the farm and I was her child, I guess.