Centre Hospitalier Camille Guérin Hospital « Camille Guérin » Châtellerault The Alzheimer disease: only a communication illness ?

To listen to and to understand To speak and to be understood To see and recognize To think, to analyze, to evaluate, to examine critically, to behave –All those skills (acquired step by step during the childhood) allow each person to assert him/herself as a single human being linked with other single human beings

The Alzheimer disease: only a communication illness ? The Alzheimer disease has as consequence with the neurological disorders a slow but inexorable unlearning of the vital communication functions: –Communication with the outside world –Communication with the others –Communication with oneself A strange feeling between anxiety, fear and anguish of loosing the relation with others, loosing the own identity, which is the origin of inappropriate psychological, behaviour reactions

Aggressiveness: a behaviour trouble ? A basis emotion of a living being A feeling: neither good nor bad A behaviour….to observe… to take into account A mean of expression A relation way An driving force of action, a reaction A protection against a threat, against the danger A alarm sign A well funded defence ?

Aggressiveness in the Alzheimer disease: a type of language ? Loss of fixed points for the time and the space > state of anxiety> state of global misunderstanding> anxiety / anguish => feeling of fear

Aggressiveness in the Alzheimer disease: a type of language ? feeling of fear –Fear in front of the others –Fear of the outside world –Fear of oneself –Aggressiveness mental depression Anger The help lived as a threat Pain and physical lack of comfort The humiliation of dependence A suffering cry A SOS call from the “Ego”

Aggressiveness in the Alzheimer disease: a type of language ? To understand and to react: which kind of answers ? –To understand the person –To reassure the person –Not to be oneself scared –Neither get into panic nor feel guilty –To say to the person that with do understand the pain –To forget any logical reasoning –To speak to the person quietly, softly –Not to answer verbally or physically –No guilty feeling: a pain is meeting an other pain. –To speak about it and to accept help

3 Types of intelligence for 3 relation ways The smart intelligence (1) –Allowing the logical thought, the reasoning This one is strongly affected in the Alzheimer disease

3 Types of intelligence for 3 relation ways The perceptive sensory intelligence (2) –the memory of senses : sight, touch, presence, perfumes, taste, music, voice tonality, the sign language… For a long time preserved in the Alzheimer disease Can be used and at disposal for a long time This is thee childhood in oneself which comes again This is a relation without filter This is the quality of the current time

3 Types of intelligence for 3 relation ways The emotional intelligence (3) –The relation based on : Empathy Sympathy emotion –The tenderness –The quality of the presence –This kind of intelligence do not depend on the nerve cells and is so not endangered in the Alzheimer disease.