engleski

The Roles of Speech and Language Therapists Working with Individuals with Dementia

In many world countries speech and language therapists are members of an interdisciplinary team of professionals who diagnose and treat older people with dementia. Assessment and treatment goals are to determine the nature and extent of the language deficit, to enable the patient to maintain as much functional language as possible, given the course of the dementing disease, and to monitor the patient’ s language capabilities for progressive involvement. In Croatia, dementia patients do not have methodically organized care and appropriate services that would benefit the individual and maximize cognitive-communication functioning at all stages of the disease process. More or less we do not have any speech and language therapist who play a primary role in the screening, assessment, diagnosis, treatment and research of cognitive-communication disorders, including those associated with Alzheimer’ s disease. Most of the current treatment strategies for cognitive-language disorders common to dementia originated from clinical aphasia treatment models. The efficacy of aphasia therapy has been explored in numerous and varied researches. Although treatments for aphasic disorders have proved to be efficacious in general, they may not be appropriate for treating the more global cognitive-language disorders in dementia. Treatment approaches have been developed to address the specific problems of dissolution of memory, reality, emotions and semantic content. The Arizona Battery for Communication Disorders of Dementia (ABCD, Bayles and Tomoeda, 1991) is the most commonly used assessment available for evaluating dementia and language deficits. Dementia patients need structure and routine for optimal performance. Stimulus materials should have saliency for the patient’ s daily living environment. Functional therapy enhances patient’ s ability to relate an object with daily activities within the home environment. Dementia patients communicate best in a face-to face client-patient encounter in a quiet, orderly environment. Patients with dementia should be diagnosed with a variety of instruments for cognitive and language status. The goals for evaluation are to assess cognitive-language disorders, determine functional status, predict outcome, and monitor functional change. Rehabilitation strategies should be designed to enable the patient to remain independent as long as possible.

Speech and language therapist; Dementia; Language; Speech; Communication

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