Resident-to-resident aggression is quite prevalent in long-term care settings. Within popular and empirical accounts, this form of aggression is most commonly attributed to the actions of an aberrant individual living with dementia characterized as the “violent resident.” It is often a medical diagnosis of dementia that is highlighted as the ultimate cause of aggression. This neglects the fact that acts of aggression are influenced by broader structural conditions. This has ethical implications in that the emphasis on individual aberration informs public (...) policy strategies for prevention with a focus on restricting the freedom of individuals using behavioural modification, drugs, or other restraints with the intent to protect others from harm. A more ethical approach requires attention to the structural conditions of long-term care that both foster aggression and constrain prevention efforts. To this end, we turn to a model of relational citizenship that offers a theory of embodied selfhood and relationality as essential to human dignity, thus entailing human rights protections. The application of an ethic based on this model offers a more holistic prevention strategy for resident-to-resident aggression by drawing attention to the critical need and obligation to promote human flourishing through system level efforts. (shrink)

Dance, as aesthetic self-expression, is a unique arts-based program that combines the physical benefits of exercise with psychosocial therapeutic benefits. While dance has also been shown to support empowerment, meaningful self-expression, and pleasurable experience, it is rarely adopted to support these aspects of engagement in the context of dementia care. The instrumental reduction of dance to its application as a therapeutic tool can be traced to the contemporary movement towards cognitive science with an emphasis on embodied cognition. This has effectively (...) elided a consideration of how the body itself, separate and apart from cognition, could be a source of intelligibility, inventiveness, and creativity. We argue for the need to broaden the therapeutic model of dance to more fully support embodied and creative self-expression by persons living with dementia. To achieve this, we explore how a relational model of citizenship that recognizes corporeality and relationality as fundamental to human existence brings a new and critical dimension to understanding the importance of dance in the context of dementia. Drawing on this model, we articulate a new kind of ethic characterized by a pre-reflective intercorporeal sensibility that requires the mobilization of public structures and practices to cultivate a relational environment for individuals living with dementia that supports human flourishing. (shrink)