Silver Pride: DSDC speaks at LGBTQ+ event for older people
Around 180 community members attended the unique Silver Pride festival at Kilmarnock’s Park Hotel to celebrate diversity and inclusivity. DSDC Senior Dementia Consultant, Dave Wilson-Wynne, who is also a member of the LGBTQ+ community, attended and spoke at the event. Clip from STV News.
About the event, Dave says:
“The event was an amazing collaborative effort, and was the first of its kind that focuses primarily on older people within the LGBTQ+ community. I spoke about the unique needs that a person living with a diagnosis of dementia might have, but also about the intersection of dementia and older people in the LGBTQ+ community.
“Right now there is a generation of people who live with dementia that might find it difficult to reminiscence about the past because it can be painful. They lived through a point where it was a criminal offense to be themselves, where it was illegal to be who they are. Because of that the support we give has to be really specific.
“When we look at risk factors of dementia, we see that many of them disproportionally affect people from the LGBTQ+ community. Specifically things like social isolation or depression, and the fact that, sadly, people living with dementia in the LGBTQ+ community are underrepresented in research.
“What we at the DSDC and the University of Stirling hope to achieve is specific training for care partners and organisations on how we should be supporting a person that is living with dementia in the LGBTQ+ community. We hope that this training can be rolled out by the end of year. What will make this course unique is the fact that the voice of lived experience will feature heavily in the training. This means that people with dementia, in the LGBTQ+ community, will be involved in the development of this training course and the research.”
Written by Miki Max Fagerli-Schmidt and David Wilson-Wynne