[Implementing change--steps toward living environment-oriented support for gerontopsychiatric patients and their caregivers, DGGG Congress, September 2001, Kiel].
The change which is necessary in home and long-term institutional elderly care, first of all, concerns the attitudes, values and norms and the acquisition of key competencies in dealing with people who have a gerontopsychiatric disease. Elderly care and attention of people suffering from dementia therefore requires a principal change in thought. The feeling of well-being is the pre-conditioning and starting point of the caring action, not its result. People suffering from dementia need the feeling of trust and security in order to be able to accept measures which seem to be illogical for them. The adjustment is therefore required from outside by shaping an environment, which provides security and orientation, and by building on caring attention relating to the patients' past interests and history. Participants of the conference could gather information about such innovative approaches in professional elderly care for people suffering from dementia in various workshops, gallery walk and a poster session. All presentations showed an approach, which was oriented towards the living environment and in which questions about the quality and continuity of life were considered to be as important as the aspects of the necessary elderly care. It is not a lack of knowledge about a subject and value oriented care for elderly people suffering from gerontopsychiatric diseases, but rather a deficit in putting this knowledge into practice, as the examples clearly showed. Gerontopsychiatric competencies have to be broadly developed and implemented.