The biomedical model has traditionally informed the dominant discourse on dementia and has significantly shaped practitioners’, policy makers’ and researchers’ responses. This model contextualises dementia as a progressive neuro-degenerative cognitive disorder and focuses on deficits and underlying pathology, often overlooking the fact that the person can and should be an active partner in the treatment process. Beginning in the late 1990s, the exclusive reliance on the bio-medical model has come under increasing scrutiny with a growing awareness that by recasting dementia in broader social and more humanitarian terms, much can be done to promote the individual's quality of life. Different frameworks and analytical tools have been forwarded to help us better understand dementia. These include personhood, citizenship, public health, disability and human rights. This review examines the merits of framing dementia as a disability, a citizenship concern and a human rights issue. It highlights some of the potential gains that can arise for the individual in using a human rights model to enhance practice, inform policy and create a more balanced research agenda. The article concludes by arguing that the complexities and magnitude of dementia are such that it requires multiple responses and a broad range of interpretative frameworks.

传统上，生物医学模型已成为痴呆症的主要话题，并已显着影响了从业者，政策制定者和研究人员的反应。该模型将痴呆症作为一种进行性神经退行性认知障碍进行了背景研究，并着重于缺陷和潜在的病理学，通常忽略了该人可以并且应该在治疗过程中成为积极伴侣的事实。从1990年代后期开始，对生物医学模型的完全依赖越来越受到人们的关注，人们越来越意识到，通过从更广泛的社会角度和更人道主义的角度重塑痴呆症，可以做很多事情来提高个人的生活质量。已经提出了不同的框架和分析工具，以帮助我们更好地了解痴呆症。这些包括人格，公民身份，公共卫生，残疾和人权。这项审查审查了将痴呆症定为残疾，公民权和人权问题的优点。它强调了个人在使用人权模型来加强实践，提供信息并制定更平衡的研究议程时可能会获得的一些潜在收益。本文的结论是，老年痴呆症的复杂性和严重性使得需要多种应对措施和广泛的解释框架。