Bafta star’s dementia care call
Glenda Jackson has called for better care for elderly people suffering from dementia, after portraying a woman living with the illness in an award-winning drama.
Ms Jackson, 84, played a woman suffering from dementia in Elizabeth Is Missing, for which she last week received a Best Actress TV Bafta.
She played Maud, who is determined to solve the mystery of her missing friend Elizabeth, while slowly losing herself to the disease. She said: “It’s waiting for us all. We are, as a society, living much longer.
“These diseases now, which were unheard of when I was a child, they come with old age and we, as a society, have a duty to accept that responsibility and really examine how we are going to care for the elderly when they get to the situation where they have to be cared for.
“Perhaps one of the benefits to this Covid pandemic is that social care has gone up the political ladder.
“I’m not making a political statement here but what I’m saying is we have to acknowledge that these terrible illnesses are here and they are here to stay, and, as a society, we have to look at how we can combine to ensure that when they strike the individual sufferer is not thrown in the bin.
“The thing I found interesting when the film was first screened was the number of people who would come up to me in the street, in the supermarket, and share their direct personal experiences of what it’s like to have someone in your family suffering from this illness and that was, and still is, intensely moving.”