Dementia patients out in public here in the Villages.
 

Dementia-related Behaviors: Managing Public Outbursts - AgingCare.com

Please take what is probably a dementia patient's outburst here in the Villages in some store, restaurant, park, etc., with a measure of restraint in both your approach and how you interact with the person's caregiver and with the authorities.

Get the facts before dialing the police. Otherwise you might make things worse for the caregiver and his or her patient.

Good advice, thanks for posting.

Just curious as to why you chose to post this??

It seems some of them still drive...

Someone close to me was out and about with her caregiver and started yelling she was being kidnapped. She was not but some busybody retired LEO decided to follow them out to the caregiver's car and then demanded ID and the phone of the patient from the caregiver. The caregiver called her company and the company made other calls. Lots of headaches because of a overzealous retired LEO.

Once they were out of the store it should not have been anyone's business.

People do get kidnapped but use some common sense and do not jump to conclusions especially if there is a person with dementia involved. Pay attention to details in other words.

That was a terrible situation. But, imagine if it was a kidnapping and the LEO had done nothing. In todays society it is often more dangerous to do nothing that to take unnecessary action.

Maybe the caregiver should have had a positive state issued ID stating they were a license caregiver and a photo ID indicating who they were taking care of.

I'm glad things worked out in the end and thank you for this thread. But I have to wonder, if someone is yelling that they are being kidnapped, why would you jump to the conclusion that they were suffering from dementia? Would it not be more prudent to be a busybody, watch out for your neighbor, and try to be sure they were not actually being kidnapped? How can I know the person has dementia? I certainly cannot rely on the word of the accused kidnapper.

The dementia patient sometimes says she is being murdered. She has said this about every week a few times.

The Villages has many Memory Care facilities which I assume have patients at many different stages of Alzheimer's or some other brain disease.

How often is a person been kidnapped here in the Villages? None that I remember in the 17 years I have lived here. And how often does a dementia patient here in the Villages have an episode? Probably many times every day.

I do remember child abductions though here in those 17 years. Alzheimer's patients often crave attention and will say the first thing that pops into their head. Like very young kids they have no filters.

Caregivers abound in the Villages. As do dementia patients. And there is a lot of turnover in that industry.

A better solution is for people to have some common sense. And read up on Alzheimer's and other kinds of brain diseases.

USUALLY if someone is screaming a problems exists. That it is a demented individual is rarely the case, even here. Personally, I would automatically react as if something bad was happening rather some demented person out and about was losing it. My response would be what numbskull let them out in the first place knowing this could happen and cause a disturbance or worse?

They belong in assisted living facilities and should not be out on the streets creating disturbances.

I beg to differ.

Managing Screaming And Crying In Seniors With Dementia | Regency Pointe

Also this.

14 Ways to Calm Dementia Screaming and Crying – DailyCaring

In my experience and from research this is very common for Alzheimer's patients to scream.

And if they can be in the comfort of their homes that is probably better for them than being in an assisted living place.

A better solution? "People have some common sense".

Okay, I will bite.

Would you care to explain how we get from (many/most) people don't have any common sense to everyone (most/many/some/a few) has common sense and uses it.

And how we do that in the current population and society. In my case, a solution that requires educating some number of generations will do me no good. If you can't say how, then it is not a solution, it's a wish or desire. It would be nice, the world would be a seriously better place. But, I don't see it as a "solution".

"Read up on...",

I too have memory issues (difficulty forming new long term memories), so I have "read up" (ahem) a lot on most (all?) forms of dementia.

There is a lot of turn over in many industries, so?

My solution was/is:

Florida does not require licensing for "care givers". With the dominant population of people with dementia or other cognitive difficulties being "older" and Florida having a fairly large population of seniors, not regulating who is taking care of those that are least able to protect themselves is not the best that Florida could do to protect its residents from the horde of scammers. Seniors are the most common target of scams.

If I get to the point where I need a care giver, I do not want my kids to have to try and figure out who they can trust. I would much rather have them be able to look up the license of any individual they are considering and KNOW they are who they say they are and they are certified and trained. Not perfect but better than anyone can print a business card and call themselves a "Care giver".

Given Florida passes legislation to require "care givers" to be licensed and have standardized IDs for both the care givers and the people with dementia they are providing care for. That way there is no need for "common sense" or guessing.

If a person is yelling and screaming that they are being kidnapped, they should be taken seriously. It might be real, it might not.

But, I would rather briefly inconvenience 20, 100, or even 1,000 people and just have the caregiver display a card with their photo and the photo of the person they are taking care of, than to not catch one wacko kidnapping someones parent or grand parent.

Was this at a political rally.

Kindness and understanding never hurt anyone