Program to offer help with understanding dementia

By ERIC SEIVERLING

eseiverling@yourmvi.com

Have you or someone you know been touched by dementia or one of its many offshoots?

If so, mark you calendars for 6:30 p.m. Feb. 27 to attend the Dementia Friends Pennsylvania’s community session at Pleasant Hills Public Library.

Sponsored by the Jewish Health Foundation and funded by a grant from the Jefferson Regional Foundation, the one-hour program will be led by a “dementia champion,”  who will discuss topics such as what dementia is and what it’s like to live with the disorder, while offering tips for communicating with people living with dementia.

Developed by the Alzheimer’s Society in the United Kingdom, the Dementia Friends initiative began in Pennsylvania in the spring of 2018.

A global movement, Dementia Friends aims to change the way people think, act and talk about dementia.

“You’ll hear people use words like crazy, dangerous and helpless to describe dementia,” said Anneliese Perry, senior quality improvement specialist for the JHF and a statewide coordinator for Dementia Friends Pennsylvania. “There’s a negative stigma to it. Our hope is that by spreading knowledge we can really change the conversation and get people to recognize that change is taking place.”

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