Narrative Collisions, Sociological Pressures and Dementia: The relational basis of personhood reconsidered.

Personal relationships are recognised as a key contextual influence upon the experience of dementia. An exclusive focus on dementia as a state of disease and the substantial strain it places upon people’s lives can result in challenges of the condition being exacerbated and, at worst, lead to cruelty due to lack of care. As a consequence, person-centred approaches (in contrast to illness-centred) offer counterbalance by emphasising that people live their lives within interdependent relationships, which can enable people with dementia to sustain a positive personal identity.