Really thought-provoking article. One thing I'd like to add into the mix is diet: at Vegetarian for Life, we've come across numerous examples of vegans or vegetarians with dementia being fed meat. That could be because the care setting encourages it due to a belief that people need meat in their diet; it could be because, in their confusion, the resident is asking to have what everyone else is having; or it could be because they at that moment appear to have forgotten that they a vegan/vegetarian, even though that's been a fundamental part of their identity for decades.
There aren't always easy answers in that situation, but we have been signing care establishments up to a Memory Care Pledge that focuses on engaging with the individual, providing them with options, and in cases of issues with capacity or cognition, offering vegetarian/vegan dishes in place of meat ones where the latter have been requested, on the basis that this is more suited to the resident's deeply-held philosophical beliefs and values. We've had a pretty good response so far from the care sector. (See: https://vegetarianforlife.org.uk/pages/pledge)
Moussa Haddad
says