Developing collective therapeutic documents with people living alongside dementia in an NHS context

Abstract

In this paper I share my experiences of ‘doing things differently’ with our Living Well with Dementia (LWWD) groups, through drawing a balance between psychoeducation and information sharing, and giving space for people to share and have witnessed their own stories, skills and knowledges of living alongside dementia, using the collective narrative practice of therapeutic documenting. LWWD lends itself well to narrative therapy practices that focus on supporting people to draw upon their own lived experiences and relationships in ways that are sustaining and acknowledging, and can reconnect them to preferred identities and storylines. Here I outline the process of developing and using collective therapeutic documents which hold an intention to strengthen a sense of connectedness and solidarity for people attending our groups, and in turn reduce the sense of isolation and the experience of ‘being on your own’ with living with dementia that people often speak of experiencing. The therapeutic collective documents developed in these sessions took the form of poetry or prose, and were written in ways that spoke directly to the unique and shared experiences of people in each group. In this paper I also share poems written in one of our groups and share feedback from group members of their experience of this novel approach to a psychosocial intervention for dementia.