An Approach to Enhancing the Life Experience of Patients with Early Alzheimer s Disease

Abstract

In this brief piece, I shall describe how providers seeing such patients may do this. I shall start with a case example involving a patient with who I carried out this intervention. The extent to which this emotionally moved her and gave her additional meaning in her life while, for her, both were still possible were marked, as I shall relate further, below, to say the least. I shall then refer to a small and very selected segment of the medical literature to suggest why provides might be warranted in anticipating that their inquiring and if wanted, then facilitating as I shall suggest, is likely to be beneficial, actually to both parties in most if not all cases. Finally, I shall discuss in more general terms the core, sequential steps that providers may take.