Thank You to Our Guests: Anne Basting, PhD Author and Dr. Jason Karlawish, MD, Co-Director Penn Memory Center
Thank You to Our Host: Rachael Friedman, Psy.D
Topic: Alzheimer’s is a Humanitarian Crisis. It Needs a Human Response.
THE TAKEAWAY
“My work as an artist, writer and humanities scholar has been about finding the various components of the cultural cure, that means easing stigma by changing the narrative, increasing education and bringing meaningful engagement to dissolve this false boundary between health, medicine, social services and arts and cultures. To me those boundaries are fake. We need to integrate them because meaning making and purpose in one’s life is vital to thriving.” – Anne Basting
“The fact that I am a physician informs more and more of my writing. I am a geriatrician. My focus is the care of people living with dementia in particular and more broadly persons living with neurodegenerative diseases. A few years ago I arrived at this idea of seeing Alzheimer’s as a disease of autonomy. For me it helped crystallize why this is a disease. It is a disease because there is a pathology in the brain…., but it becomes a disease fully because ….it goes after a cherished value. ….Only in about the last quarter of the 20th century autonomy was widely recognized as a value that all should have.” – Jason Karlawish
RESOURCES:
Books:
- Forget Memory: Creating Better Lives for People with Dementia. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press (2009).
- Creative Care: A Revolutionary Approach to Dementia and Elder Care. HarperOne (2020). Available in paperback (April 2021).
- The Problem of Alzheimer’s, St. Martins Press (2021)
- Treating Dementia: Do we have a pill for it?
Guests’ Websites:
Other Resources: