I’d Seen Dementia’s Toll on My Patients. Now I Was Watching the Disease Unravel My Family.

April 15, 2014

(Washington Post) – As a geriatric psychiatrist, I understood the devastating toll dementia could take on an entire family. I had urged my mother-in-law to seek care early, which she had done, so she knew her options included activities to stay socially engaged, medication to slow the illness and possibly experimental treatment. But on a personal level, I was worried about my father-in-law, my wife, her siblings and myself. We would be my mother-in-law’s caregivers for the rest of her life. She was 76; my father-in-law was 79.