Wednesday 19 March 2014

Clinical Psychologists tests in dementia


I often wonder how clinical psychologists can look at someone with dementia, and come out with the correct results; perhaps I am totally wrong here,

As I have Lewy Body dementia, I don’t use the mini mental  tests , as I was told that they are no good on people with Lewy Body Dementia, or so I am told by the consultants, because they say the results are misleading.
I use a longer form of tests which they think is more accurate, but I can never remember what it's called.

 So why is it when I go to see a Clinical psychologist, I don’t feel 100% happy

They always ask lots of questions and go over, lots of paragraphs and stories, with names and addresses, and then ask you questions.

Then when you cannot remember, they go back over the questions with prompts, with a series of answers in which you have to pick the correct one out, and can only answer yes or no, to each, but at best this is guess work or just pure luck if you manage to get it right.

But how can this be right if we simply don’t know the answer in the first place, and are told to make a guess at the answer. Sometimes they give a series of prompts,

In this life, whether at work or anywhere else, we don’t get prompts when we get things wrong, so just how does this work and how do they get the results right.

I do not understand these people, but perhaps they know what they are doing, I simply don’t understand it.

To me if I don’t know the answer, then it’s simply gone, because trying to force myself the think of an answer just causes unnecessary stress.

In normal life we never have the benefit of having the answers nearby or anyone helping us, because no one has any idea what we are thinking at any one stage,  so how can these tests be worth doing, and how can they prove anything.

I find this whole process very hard and distressing,  and sometimes feel as if they are making us look silly.

There are many times during the day that I go to do something, but then forget what I was going to do, but there are no prompts, and unless I have remembered to write it down somewhere it’s all lost and gone.

I know that many other people are struggling to understand this same topic for the very same reasons    

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I always say that we may have this illness, but we are all so different.

This is my own daily problems, but I would gladly share anyone elses, if they send them in,

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