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Could it be dementia?

Losing your mind doesn't mean losing your soul

‘Not all who wander are lost’

COULD IT BE DEMENTIA?
Losing your mind doesn’t mean losing your soul
By Louise Morse and Roger Hitchings
Monarch Books. 220 pages. £7.99
ISBN 978-1-85424-825-1

‘But older people have had their day!’ exclaims one Christian in one of the many memorable and moving anecdotes in this practical and yet spiritually challenging account of dementia. Both its authors are closely connected with Pilgrim Homes, one of very few specifically Christian organisations providing care for the frail elderly in the UK.

This combination of practicality and spirituality sums up the book’s strength. Even as a GP for well over 20 years, I learned many new things about dementia — that nearly all types, including Alzheimer’s, are now thought to be primarily caused by blood flow problems in the brain, that being married or having lots of close social networks can reduce the likelihood of developing symptoms of dementia and that loss of the sense of smell can be an early symptom.

Being a member of an increasingly youthful church, however, the book’s challenge to churches to care for elderly members was especially pertinent. One in five over the age of 65 is affected by dementia and most congregations will have sufferers or carers or both in their midst, yet few churches give any thought to what they might offer in the way of meeting the needs of this part of the body of Christ. So often, with the emphasis today firmly on youth ministry, the elderly are written off by default even if not design. Louis Morse writes, ‘I wish I could invent a kind of breastplate for our elderly residents that would light up with a video of them in their prime, so visitors could see them as they really are’. Short of this invention, she and Roger Hitchings have done a good job in this book of drawing the attention of Bible-based churches to the fact that our elderly may be bruised reeds that we are breaking rather than caring for as we should — and could if we really opened our eyes to their need.

Trevor Stammers,
South London GP and member of Morden Baptist Church, Surrey