Older Patients, Wiser Care
Should You Tell Someone He or She Has Alzheimer’s?
By Leslie Kernisan, M.D., Caring.com Senior Medical Editor
Dear Dr. Kernisan: Should an elderly person (83) be told that she’s been diagnosed as being in the early stages of Alzheimer’s disease and what to expect as the disease progresses?
–Caring.com community member RQM
Yes, I generally recommend that the person be told of a diagnosis of Alzheimer’s dementia, unless there’s good reason to believe that she’d prefer to be shielded from a difficult diagnosis. Being told you have an incurable disease such as Alzheimer’s is very difficult to hear, but every patient is entitled to autonomy. This means you should be able to make decisions for yourself (instead of doctors deciding what’s best, which is how things used to be). And to make decisions, you need reasonably accurate information about your condition, including what to expect. So a person should be told, no matter how upsetting the news.
What would be a good reason to believe the person wants to be shielded from this information? Well, some people say so. They have a history of asking that difficult information go through a specific family member first. In fact, in many cultures worldwide it’s actually expected that the doctor do this, and leave it up to the family to decide how much information to share with the sick person.
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