The Transformative Power of Reading in Dementia Care
In the midst of dementia's profound challenges, one family discovered an unexpected bridge to connection through the simple act of reading aloud. Journalist Jo Glanville's experience caring for both parents with degenerative illnesses reveals how preserved cognitive abilities can remain hidden beneath the surface of apparent vacancy.
A Personal Journey Through Parental Illness
Jo Glanville's mother, Pamela, a journalist herself, passed away from vascular dementia a decade ago. Her father, the renowned football journalist and novelist Brian Glanville, lived with Parkinson's disease for five years before his death last year, accompanied by a milder form of dementia. Their experiences stand in contrast to novelist Ian McEwan's description of his own mother's advanced dementia as being 'alive and dead all at once' - a perspective Glanville finds problematic when reflecting on her parents' final years.
The crucial question emerges: how can we truly know what continues within another person's mind when communication becomes increasingly difficult?
The Unexpected Discovery Through Literature
Glanville's breakthrough came through reading to her parents, an activity both continued to enjoy until the end of their lives. She observed that they maintained their ability to comprehend narratives, follow storylines, and even understand obscure vocabulary. One particularly telling moment occurred while reading Arthur Koestler's memoirs to her father, one of his favourite writers.
'He noticed that I wasn't reading them chronologically,' Glanville recalls. 'I hadn't even realised myself.' This demonstrated preserved cognitive function that dementia hadn't erased.
Breaking Through Communication Barriers
The challenge, Glanville discovered, wasn't that her parents had lost understanding, but rather that their illnesses had robbed them of the ability to initiate communication or express desires. Her father would spend entire days sitting silently, appearing vacant to casual visitors, yet this wasn't absence but rather an inability to connect outwardly.
'There appears to be some kind of motor in the brain that enables us to connect with the outside world,' Glanville observes, 'which his illness had destroyed.' Only through active engagement - asking questions, encouraging communication, and crucially, reading aloud - could connections be re-established.
Scientific Validation of Personal Experience
Glanville's experience finds support in formal research. The charity The Reader has documented how reading groups and shared reading sessions can dramatically affect people living with dementia, often triggering unexpected fluency and communication in response to literature. University of Liverpool researcher Philip Davis evaluated The Reader's work, concluding that reading aloud to dementia patients produced significant reduction in symptom severity and contributed substantially to wellbeing.
This evidence suggests Glanville's discovery represents more than just a personal anecdote, pointing toward a potentially underutilised therapeutic approach.
Implications for Dementia Care and Policy
Glanville's journey carries important implications for how we perceive and care for people with degenerative illnesses. She argues against assuming that silence or lack of communication indicates absence of understanding or engagement. 'One has to make the effort to see if there is some way of making a connection,' she insists.
This perspective also informs her position on assisted dying debates. While acknowledging there may come a point with devastating conditions like Alzheimer's where connection becomes impossible, she maintains that 'death, for certain, only comes when someone physically ceases to function.' For Glanville, people with dementia require advocacy that recognises potential for continued pleasure and connection even as their world diminishes.
The experience has left Glanville with a profound understanding: even as dementia creates increasing barriers, opportunities for meaningful engagement may persist if caregivers remain open to discovering unconventional pathways to connection. Reading aloud provided one such pathway in her family's journey, revealing preserved cognitive landscapes that might otherwise have remained hidden forever.
