SPECAL CARE / SPECAL SENSE

Reading 'Contented Dementia' by Oliver James, I was very impressed by his description of the SPECAL approach to the care of people suffering from dementia, developed by his mother in law.  The main idea is not to ask questions of and never to contradict someone with dementia. The point is that their emotional reality is as real and intense as any normal healthy person, its just that it is continually undermined by a lack of information about their present situation, therefore they need help to live the present through what they do still retain from the past.

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Penny learned that you cannot succeed with someone with dementia unless you protect them from all the disastrous experiential roads down which they can so easily travel.

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"Pennys great insight was that building upon a real memory is completely different from the encouragement of a delusion... Penny's unique clinical innovation was to spot the benign potential of systematically supporting the re-experience of long term memories."

The result of these perceptions is a very thorough care approach which makes a lot of sense while requiring a complete switch in how one relates to another person.  Might it be possible for a film to demand the same switch in the mind of the viewer?