May 2, 2019
At one point in BBC 1’s Our Dementia Choir, the wife of 67-year-old Chris, who is living with the condition, says to Line of Duty’s Vicky McClure, “What you’ve given Chris is unbelievable”. And it is. For Chris’s rare type of frontal temporal dementia affects...
Mar 7, 2019
What do you see when you look at this painting? A couple in the foreground who look a bit bored in what looks to be a gallery or artist’s studio? Or perhaps your gaze goes straight to the collection of impressive looking busts and the striking white horse which, it...
Feb 21, 2019
This week seems to be all about carers for me. I opened my inbox to find an email from one of my oldest friends. Her mum, diagnosed with dementia the year before, died last autumn aged 85 and now her elderly dad, a partially-sighted diabetic, has developed dementia...
Feb 3, 2019
The BBC has been told to go back to basics and concentrate on public service broadcasting if it wants to survive. James Kirkup, director of the Social Market Foundation think tank, hailed the corporation for helping to make Britain not just a country but a nation,...
Jan 29, 2019
There was a great Twitter exchange about the term “service users” recently. Big Ian Donaghy, aka @trainingcarers, asked if anybody else hated the phrase as much as he did. “It’s like they had a contest to find the best word for people we care for and the 31st best...
Dec 10, 2018
The other day I caught a mesmerising Radio 4 programme on the history of delusions. In it, Sophie (not her real name) related what it was like to suffer from the traumatising belief that she was dead. She experienced severe depression and a numbing sense of...
