Death in life or life in death? Dementia's ontological challenge

摘要

Is it possible to end one's life well with dementia? The perception of dementia as death brought into life flows from ideas about humanness embedded in medicine's Cartesian paradigm. Dementia as incurable brain disease exacerbates negativity. But the real impact of dementia is that it changes social relations: to live well with dementia requires a relational not Cartesian understanding of life. A relational ontology prioritizes social health: to live is to be held in connection. Negativity produces the disconnection that is death, with or without disease. When people with dementia are held in connection, they live a better life.