Malini Hall has found mattresses outfitted with restraints and makeshift contraptions assembled to hold elderly patients in their beds.
An occupational therapist, she works in the homes of Toronto residents who have dementia, helping to make their surroundings safer, and says that desperate spouses and children often confide that they have locked their loved ones in their bedrooms while they slept.
“People think at night, ‘Maybe I can lock them in,’ but it’s really unsafe,” said Ms. Hall, who works for Saint Elizabeth Health Care. “It can really backfire on you.”
The death of a 66-year-old woman found frozen on a Scarborough sidewalk early Monday morning has shone a glaring light on the worst nightmare of many of those caring for the 500,000 Canadians living with dementia: the possibility that their wife or father could wander off in the night, lost and confused.
Across the country, police blotters are filled with reports of missing elderly men and women, their disappearances reported to 911 by caregivers in the hopes that they will be found safe.
Janice McCaffrey, a competitive race-walker from Calgary who has represented Canada in three Olympic Games, is embroiled in a desperate search for her 85-year-old father, Hugh Turner, who has been missing in Mesa, Ariz., since Christmas Eve.
Although her father had not been diagnosed with dementia, several people reported spotting him in the neighborhood up to 24 hours after he was reported missing, suggesting that he was disoriented and unable to find his way home.
“We’re of the mind that a cognitive event occurred to incapacitate him and make him wander off and be confused,” Ms. McCaffrey said from Arizona on Monday.
Police, search parties and even a psychic group have been engaged in the prolonged search, which has plastered the city with 16,000 posters and is now focused on the surrounding desert.
But Ms. McCaffrey wishes her father had been wearing some sort of tracking device or bracelet, which are gaining favor with the families of dementia patients.
“I know it’s a terrible thing and people don’t want to lose their independence and be tagged, but if anybody’s got a family member that’s pretty senior, you’ve got to do something,” she said. “You don’t ever want to go through this.”
Technology is playing an increasingly prominent role in the safety of those with cognitive impairments, and will likely become even more prominent as the population ages.
The number of people with Alzheimer’s disease and related dementias is expected to double in the next 20 years, and Mary Schulz of the Alzheimer Society of Canada said wandering will become a growing concern.
“We can expect the number of people who become lost and, sadly, perish, to go up,” she said. “One of the things we need to think about as a country: Are we really laying this all at the feet of families?”
The Alzheimer’s Society offers a program called Safely Home, which has 33,765 registrants across Canada. A $35 fee provides an ID bracelet, and a registration number that is added to a national database accessible by local police forces.
But Ms. Schulz said a national strategy on dementia is required, and that governments should play a role. This could include tax credits for families who make physical changes to their home to increase the safety of elderly residents, she said, just as home owners are reimbursed for environmental improvements to their properties.
Families must also educate themselves about the disease, she said, and understand that someone who is used to rising at four a.m. throughout his or her lifetime of employment might revert to that habit in the throes of dementia.
“You have to plan for that,” she said. “But it’s so difficult. And no one family can do it all, no matter how devoted they are.”
