Guidance
This guideline covers preventing, diagnosing, assessing and managing dementia in health and social care, and includes recommendations on Alzheimer’s disease. It aims to improve care for people with dementia by promoting accurate diagnosis and the most effective interventions, and improving the organisation of services.
In September 2016, recommendation 1.3.3.2 was updated and replaced by recommendations 1.2.9, 1.6.3, 1.6.4, 1.7.5 and 1.8.17 in the NICE guideline on mental health problems in people with learning disabilities, and recommendations 1.5.1.2 and 1.6.2.7 were replaced by recommendation 1.8.16 in the NICE guideline on mental health problems in people with learning disabilities.
Recommendations
This guideline includes recommendations on:
- integrating health and social care
- risk factors, prevention and early identification
- diagnosis and assessment
- interventions for cognitive and non-cognitive symptoms, and comorbid emotional disorders
- palliative care
- support and interventions for carers
Who is it for?
- Health and social care staff working in the NHS, integrated health and social care services, statutory social services and the voluntary and independent sectors
- Commissioners, providers and regulators
- Housing associations, private and voluntary organisations contracted by the NHS or social services
- People using NHS and social care services and their families and carers
Is this guideline up to date?
We reviewed the evidence in April 2015 and we are updating this guideline. See the guideline in development page for progress on the update.
Guideline development process
How we develop NICE guidelines
Your responsibility
The recommendations in this guideline represent the view of NICE, arrived at after careful consideration of the evidence available. When exercising their judgement, professionals are expected to take this guideline fully into account, alongside the individual needs, preferences and values of their patients or service users. The application of the recommendations in this guideline is not mandatory and the guideline does not override the responsibility of healthcare professionals to make decisions appropriate to the circumstances of the individual patient, in consultation with the patient and/or their carer or guardian.
Local commissioners and/or providers have a responsibility to enable the guideline to be applied when individual health professionals and their patients or service users wish to use it. They should do so in the context of local and national priorities for funding and developing services, and in light of their duties to have due regard to the need to eliminate unlawful discrimination, to advance equality of opportunity and to reduce health inequalities. Nothing in this guideline should be interpreted in a way that would be inconsistent with compliance with those duties.
Commissioners and providers have a responsibility to promote an environmentally sustainable health and care system and should assess and reduce the environmental impact of implementing NICE recommendations wherever possible.