Living with dementia: To improve lives, we need to change how we think and talk about this experience in aging societies

Living with dementia: To improve lives, we need to change how we think and talk about this experience in aging societies 
EurekAlert! - AAAS (American Association for the Advancement of Science); by The Hastings Center and edited by Nancy Berlinger, Erin Gentry Lamb, and Kate de Medeiros; 9/24/25 
To experience or even contemplate dementia raises some of the most profound questions: What does it mean to be a person? How does someone find meaning in life while facing progressive neurological deterioration? ... To improve the lives of our fellow citizens who are living with dementia or providing dementia care, all of us need to pay attention to how we imagine and talk about these interwoven and increasingly common experiences, concludes Living with Dementia: Learning from Cultural Narratives in Aging Societies, a special report published by The Hastings Center for Bioethics. This report responds to calls from health care and social service practitioners for new ways to depict and talk about dementia, a collective term for Alzheimer disease and related dementias. 
Editor's Note: Click here for free access to multiple articles in this crucial report, such as

• How Do Cultural Narratives Shape the Lives of People Living with Dementia? Insights from Humanities Research
• Imagining Ourselves into the Lives of People Living with Dementia: Toward New Narratives for Aging Societies
• Dementia, Narrative, and Place: What Can Be Learned from the Age-Friendly Movement?
• Reliable Narrators of Experience: Rethinking Dementia Narratives from Insider Perspectives
• More ...