Guidelines for the Support and Management of People with Dementia

Guidelines for the Support and Management of People with Dementia

Date of publication: June 1997
Published online: July 2003

These guidelines were originally issued by the Ministry of Health in 1997.
Although these guidelines have not been updated, they still provide the basis for good practice in discharge planning. They have been developed as guidelines for the discharge of people requiring ongoing treatment and community support. They provide an outline of the services and considerations required to ensure that when people with psychiatric disorders leave hospital they receive adequate treatment and support.

Introduction

Dementia is the clinical syndrome characterised by acquired losses of cognitive and emotional abilities severe enough to interfere with daily functioning and quality of life. It is not a specific diagnosis but includes more than 55 illnesses, some of which are non-progressive.

Dementia is not a specific disease but a syndrome with many possible causes. Dementia describes the loss of cognitive abilities in someone who was previously cognitively intact. New Zealand’s population is ageing. The prevalence of the dementias increases markedly with increasing age so the number of affected people is projected to rise rapidly in the next few decades. This is a worldwide trend. Whilst the ageing population will contribute the large majority of new cases the issues of those younger people with dementia should not be neglected. Most Crown Health Enterprises in New Zealand have specialised services for the elderly and a number of these employ psychiatrists for the elderly. The particularly poignant issues that arise in the case of a younger person with dementia should not be neglected simply because they do not fit neatly into traditional service boundaries.

Document availability

This document is only availablle on this website in PDF format below

(PDF, 249 kB)

This document has been converted to Adobe's Portable Document Format (PDF). Here is a link to information on downloading and viewing PDFs.