On dementia, we need to tell it how it is

David Lee responds to a letter questioning the use of language about people with dementia

Sally Byers takes Polly Toynbee to task (Letters, 19 October) for using what she considers to be “deeply troubling language” about people with dementia, in particular the phrases “glazed stares or sleeping mouths agape” and “that terrible human vacancy” in Toynbee’s article (In Liverpool I saw the tough choices Louise Casey faces on social care – starting with who will pay?, 13 October).

I looked at the Dementia Engagement and Empowerment Project language guide for journalists highlighted in the letter. It gives a list of words and descriptions to avoid, including “dementia sufferer”, and lists alternative phrases to be used as “person/people with dementia”, “person/people living with dementia” or “person/people living well with dementia”.

I disagree. Toynbee described what she saw and wrote it, and her words had impact. In all the care homes I have been into to see elderly relatives, people with dementia weren’t “living well with dementia”; they were suffering. So why can’t we all tell it how it is rather than pretending otherwise? David Lee Staveley, Cumbria