Students learn about dementia, caring for patients with disease

Please join us in thanking Joyce Mangis and Ing Kalchthaler who joined several of our programs to present the Introduction to Dementia Friends program, an hour-long interactive information session to learn about living with dementia.

Joyce Mangis and Ing Kalchthaler each work at the Shaler North Hills Library and have presented Introduction to Dementia Friends to the general public once a month for more than two years for others to learn about dementia, living with the disease and bringing down stigmas and common misconceptions surrounding it.

“People underestimate how good life can be even after diagnosis,” Ing Kalchthaler said. “We also underestimate how difficult it can be to walk that dementia disease road with somebody. The more we talk about it the more we understand that nobody walks it alone, and that’s why sessions like this are so important. It gets people talking about it. It’s a common misconception that once you are diagnosed that, that’s it and there’s no more good quality of life. That’s not true.”

They also have presented Introduction to Dementia Friends at personal care homes for staff, families and residents.

“We thought it would be really important to do this with people who are younger, especially for students who are already so excited to learn and be aware of the cognitive impairment that might be going on with some of the patients that they will care for,” Ing Kalchthaler said.

They appreciated the response from the several hundred students they presented to at A.W. Beattie.

“The students were so engaged and so polite,” Joyce Mangis said. “And they wanted to stop to tell us their personal stories which we really appreciated.”