BEHAVIOURAL AND PSYCHOLOGICAL PROBLEMS IN THE CASE OF ALZHEIMER’S DISEASE: SEXUAL BEHAVIOUR

Posted on April 2nd, 2009, by admin

This can be a problem for two reasons. Sometimes a person with dementia becomes sexually more active than is socially acceptable. On the other hand many partners still have sexual needs of their own. If the carer still feels the need for sexual relations with the husband or wife, there is of course absolutely nothing wrong with this and it may be possible to obtain the appropriate responses even though he or she may need to take the initiative.

Sometimes a person with dementia, especially if it is caused by a condition like Pick’s disease, may lose the normal sexual inhibitions that we all learn earlier in life and make inappropriate advances to others. This can of course be very embarrassing and distressing to the object of attention and also to the carers. This type of behaviour should be very definitely but very gently discouraged, as should masturbation in public.

If a person with dementia appears naked unexpectedly or undresses in public, there is probably no sexual connotation to this at all. A man may start to fiddle with his trousers and take them off because he feels the need to relieve himself, but has forgotten that he should first go to the bathroom and that he should not undress in front of other people. It is very important not to over-react to situations like this, but to explain gently to him what he should and shouldn’t do and to undertake this in a manner which will be interpreted as providing assistance rather than anger.

One elderly lady with Alzheimer’s disease kept lifting her skirt up when other people were present and, if unchecked, began to pull down her underwear. This appeared to be because she was under the impression, often mistakenly, that she needed to pass urine. Her husband successfully overcame this by dressing her in trousers when they were in the company of others, and these trousers had a Velcro fastener at the back. Being unable to adapt easily to new things, she soon stopped trying to remove the trousers as she couldn’t work out how to undo the fastening. Instead she intimated to her husband from time to time that something was amiss, prompting him to take her to the bathroom when necessary.

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