Dementia following bereavement

Health and social care professionals should be aware that people with dementia may re-experience grief because of a failure to retain details of the loss of a spouse or family member.

People with dementia may require support from health and social care professionals with grief following a bereavement, to process the loss and to manage any distress, agitation and confusion associated with the loss.

Support for people with dementia experiencing grief should be delivered by professionals with appropriate training (as defined by the Promoting Excellence Framework in Dementia).¹¹

Health and social care professionals should be aware of the risk of complicated or prolonged grief in the carers of people with dementia following the death of the person with dementia.

Health and social care professionals should be aware that the experience of complicated grief or prolonged grief may be more likely in carers:

• who are spouses
• when the person with dementia moves into long-term care, outside the home setting
• who have experienced high levels of guilt, depression, a lack of social support and a higher care burden.

Health and social care professionals should be aware that carers of people with dementia may experience complicated grief, and should consider offering referral for psychological therapy, as appropriate. As grief is a very individual experience, the individual's informed consent must be obtained and circumstances that might affect their ability or wish to engage in such approaches should be taken into account.

Practitioners with appropriate knowledge skills and expertise in dementia, defined in the Promoting Excellence Framework in Dementia,¹¹ could deliver psychological approaches to support people experiencing complicated grief. Local services offered by both statutory and non-statutory sectors, and carers’ individual preferences for accessing these services, should be considered.