Language impairment: a review of the efficacy of non-verbal communication in working with patients who have dementia

Communication is the main currency through which we make transactions in the social world. Without it, interactions among people would be mechanical. Dementia is one of the mental disorders with the abilities of excluding one from participating in a social world. The aim of this study was to review literature on the efficacy of nonverbal communication when working with people living with dementia. A narrative style of literature review was used in writing this article. It involved conducting an online search of articles from the following scientific databases (2000-2019): ProQuest Central, ScienceDirect, Wiley online library, Springer Link, and Oxford Journals. Only articles that had been peer reviewed were selected in writing this review. The process of selecting articles involved pairing the word dementia in every search with the following key words: communication, epidemiology, types, nonverbal, touch, instrumental, expressive, facial expressions and eye contacts, and personal space. Themes were then extracted from the selected articles. From our findings we concluded that nonverbal communication is an important component for working with people living with dementia. This is because people living with dementia have a reduced capacity to use the verbal form of communication. This now makes it necessary for professionals providing care to people living with dementia to be acquainted with nonverbal forms of communication.