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Title: Alzheimer's: Answers to Hard Questions for Families by James Lindemann Nelson, Hilde Lindemann Nelson ISBN: 0-385-48533-6 Publisher: Doubleday Books Pub. Date: 01 June, 1996 Format: Hardcover Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $21.95

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Average Customer Rating: 4.33 (3 reviews)

Rating: 3
Summary: Too judgemental for the subject matter
Comment: The words "selfish" and "selfless" are used repeatedly in this book, and the authors state very clearly that "selfish" is bad and "selfless" is good. It is "selfish" not to take care of your Alzheimer's-afflicted relative in your own home, it is "selfless" to take care of your Alzheimer's-afflicted relative in your own home.

I think that this is already the baseline model that each of us brings with us when we start deciding how to accomodate an Alzheimer's patient that we love. No fresh new outlooks from the labs of academia here. Nor is there any educational material about how ethicists arrive at the conclusions they do.

The format of the book is descriptions of seven composite family scenarios. The tone of the writing underlines the judgemental quality of the thinking by narrating in a sing-songy rhythm, and using character descriptions that remind me of the lesson book we used in my Catholic catechism class during grade-school.

The selfhood discussion comes too late in the book. The concept of "selfhood" and the effects of Alzheimer's on selfhood would have made a much better focus for this discussion than the "family-care good" "institutional-care bad" framework that was so overpowering. They should have featured why a family would want to protect a patient's selfhood, and how other considerations like safety, inconvenience, and concommitant and equally important tasks (such as parenting young and teenage children) might come into conflict with (or dovetail with) protection of the patient's selfhood.

The long-term consequences to each individual of the choices that they make during an Alzheimer's convalescence would have been a less judgemental angle to approach issues of "selfishness" from. There was no recognition in any of the scenarios of the effect of long-standing mental illness in family members, including but not limited to the patient, or ethical ways of viewing "dysfunction" in families facing the care of an Alzheimer's patient.

Rating: 5
Summary: A Useful Guide to Alzheimer's
Comment: Answers to Hard Questions for Families guides readers through the difficult moral and ethical problems any family dealing with the disease will have to face.

Rating: 5
Summary: A truly useful book
Comment: Answers to Hard Questions for Families guides readers through the difficult moral and ethical problems any family dealing with the disease will have to face.