Providing Services for People with Dementia Who Live Alone

As many as one third of community-dwelling people with Alzheimer’s disease and other dementias live alone. Like other older adults who live alone, many people with Alzheimer’s and other dementias want to remain independent and prefer living alone to the other options available to them. On the other hand, the symptoms of Alzheimer’s and other dementias, such as impairments in memory, judgment, and ability to plan and carry out activities—symptoms that affect all people with these conditions—create obvious risks for individuals who live alone. Available research shows that they are at high risk for self-neglect, malnutrition, injury, medication errors, financial exploitation, unmet care needs, and nursing home placement.

Much less information is available about people with Alzheimer’s and other dementias who live alone than about people with these conditions who live with others in the community. For this issue brief, the National Resource Center for the Administration on Aging’s Alzheimer’s Disease Supportive Services Program (ADSSP) reviewed the available literature and conducted interviews with people with Alzheimer’s and other dementias who live alone, caregivers, and health care and social service professionals to obtain their views about the needs of these people and potentially effective ways to meet those needs. It also describes programs that have been tested by community agencies to reach and help people with Alzheimer’s and other dementias who live alone and discusses related public policy and practice implications.

The issue brief is intended to assist state officials, program administrators, health care and social service professionals, and community-service agencies in planning and providing services for the large segment of the Alzheimer’s and dementia population that lives alone.