Posted on 18th Mar 2010 @ 3:51 PM

A common symptom of Alzheimer’s is the tendency to wander, in fact of the 700,000 predicted suffers, approximately 1/3 will wander at some point, according to the Alzheimer’s association.

This can cause immense stress to the family or carer and put the individual at considerable risk.

According to the Alzheimer's Association, often, someone who's wandering is:

• Searching for something. Wanderers are often looking for something or someone familiar, especially if they recently moved to a new environment. In other cases, wanderers are trying to satisfy a basic need, such as hunger or thirst — but they've forgotten what to do or where to go. Many wanderers are looking for a bathroom.
• Escaping from something. Sometimes wandering is a result of stress, anxiety or too much stimulation, such as multiple conversations in the background or even the noise of pots and pans in the kitchen. In other cases, restlessness or wandering is a reaction to pain.
• Reliving the past. If wandering occurs at the same time every day, it may be linked to a lifelong routine. For example, a woman who tries to leave the nursing home every day at 5 p.m. may believe she's going home from work.

In other cases, wandering is triggered by medication side effects.

In any of these cases, it would be difficult to know where to start looking, Pin Point have a variety of packages that will give you the ability to quickly and accurately Pin Point the location of the wearer.

Often, families see no alternative but to place their loved ones into residential care, which can add huge financial burden to an already difficult situation.

Pin Point aims its products and services at enabling people who have Alzheimer’s, to stay in their own homes for longer. Our products require very little end user control and give the carer the ability to quickly and accurately locate the wearer.

Pin Point also provide additional services that will improve the safety of the wanderer by enabling restricted zone setting and additional alert functions, such as via email or SMS.

The Alzheimers society has released a positional statement on this subject, a summary and background of which can be found below. For the full version, please visit www.alzheimers.org.uk

Summary

Technology for safer walking has the potential to offer benefits to people with dementia and their carers in specific circumstances. But practical and ethical issues, and the concerns of people with dementia and their carers, have yet to be fully addressed.

Background

The Society is keen to point out that the need to walk is often not a problem for the person with dementia. Walking in a safe environment is usually a positive experience and can provide physical and psychological benefits. The motivation to walk is varied and usually represents a response to a need, such as boredom or discomfort.

However, some walking can be problematic, when it has associated risks. Many people with dementia feel compelled to walk about or leave their homes. This is is often called 'wandering' and is estimated to occur in 15 - 60% of people with dementia (Robinson et al., 2007), although prevalence is difficult to assess.

One study found that the risk of getting lost was substantial, with about 40% of people with dementia getting lost outside their home. This sometimes resulted in increased confinement within the home and an increased chance of becoming permanently resident in an institution (McShane et al., 1998). Other associated risks include physical harm, emotional distress, and premature mortality (O'Connor et al., 1990; Ballard et al., 2001; Algase, 2005).

The term wandering should specifically refer to walking when there is an associated risk for an individual and in these cases an intervention may be necessary. Interventions to assist safer walking should be encouraged, rather than to prevent wandering, in order to balance the need to minimise risk with the need for personal freedom (Coltharp et al., 1996; Cohen-Mansfield and Werner, 1998), and because of the benefits of walking.

Assistive technology - which describes a range of devices that have been developed as a result of technological advances to help people live more independent lives - may assist with safer walking. There are two types of technology that may be used.

• An alarm system is used to alert carers to the fact that an individual has moved outside a set boundary, but it cannot locate an individual.
• Tracking devices are used to locate a person at any time or place. This type of system is becoming increasingly available and affordable.

There has been a lot of development of this type of technology in recent years.