Creating the Truth with Persons Living with Advanced Dementia

June 29, 2021

Jason Karlawish, MD, Core Leader for the IMPACT Ethics & Regulation Core, wrote a commentary in the Journal of Law, Medicine & Ethics addressing the need to practice “creative care” with people living with dementia instead of relying on sedatives and lies when patients are agitated.

Truth telling to persons living with dementia is a nuanced problem that demands negotiating between the hazards of principlism and the loving deceiver’s demand to lie as needed. To ban deception, as we do restraints, would be misguided and cruel. So too to demand we always tell the truth. We ought to adopt a practice called “creative care.” It begins with the premise that person’s living with dementia are capable of creativity. Creative care breaks down the mysterious fourth wall we build around persons living with dementia, especially persons with advanced dementia. It invites us to see a person living with dementia as a person who is capable of creating something beautiful. They need our time and words, not our lies and sedatives.