A group of disabled campaigners with dementia spoke out this week as they launched a “ground-breaking” new booklet that highlights their battle for rights.
Our Dementia, Our Rights aims to “bring together in one place the facts about some of the key rights relating to dementia in the UK”.
Larry Gardiner (pictured), a spokesman for the Dementia Policy Think Tank (DPTT), which was set up in 2016 by a group of people with a diagnosis of dementia, launched the booklet at Disability Rights UK’s annual conference in north London.
He said that people with dementia are “routinely” subjected to a denial of their human rights, with forced medication “absolute routine”, and the prescription of psychoactive drugs to “treat the presentation of our condition rather than recognising the underlying problem, which is that our brain cells are dying”.
Gardiner said: “People with dementia are disproportionately affected by breaches of human rights.
“One of the examples is the way legislation can be used to deprive us of a voice in determining what happens to us.
“We have a degenerative condition that leads to death. We have a right to a life worth living before we die.”
He added: “We find it very difficult to access any form of social care support.
“When it becomes too expensive to support us, we go into a care home.