Frena Gray-Davidson has lived and worked with people with Alzheimer’s disease for almost 20 years.

“My Alzheimer's story began by accident. I was looking to save rent, so I moved into a house in Berkeley, California,and became a caregiver to a 79-year-old woman with Alzheimer’s.”

It was 1986 and Frena was newly-arrived in the USA. British born and educated, she had worked as a freelance writer and broadcaster in Asia for 15 years before arriving in the USA.

“Like many people starting in Alzheimer’s care, I had no idea what to do. I attended some workshops, but I soon realized I had to learn the culture and language of Alzheimer’s from those who actually had it. My first great teacher was the woman whose house I had moved into.”

Paying close attention to those who have Alzheimer’s and similar dementias is still the essence of Frena’s ground-breaking work. It is how she has developed a meaningful understanding which gives new and profoundly usable tools to both family members and professional care workers.

“Our society considers people with dementia to be empty, lost and gone-away. This is a completely false view and it demoralizes family caregivers to the point of despair. My work has largely involved creating a guidebook to prevent caregivers from getting lost. Once we see that we can become a Light on the journey for the person with dementia, everything changes.”

Frena has experienced many dementia care settings. They include:

• staff training in a 54-bed Alzheimer’s unit;
• setting up a day care program which was part of the National Model Program;
• establishing small care homes appropriate for dementia care;
• giving dementia care in a 24-hour at home setting.

From all this experience, she has evolved training modes suitable for both family caregivers and professional care staff.

Frena has 15 years of work as a support group facilitator ― for the Alzheimer’s Association, for the Agency on Aging, for local caregiver groups in different settings. She also covers caregiving issues through her weekly public radio program “The Help I’m Going Crazy Hour for Caregivers” and her regular newspaper column “The Caregiver Coach.”

She brings an unmatched practical involvement with dementia care, together with years of giving training and workshops in multi-cultural settings. As a communicator she has a lively sense of humor and compassion. She also brings a deep immersion in the world of Alzheimer’s and those who give care. From this, she creates life-changing, spirit-enhancing, skill-building sessions for all who attend.

“Most people are lost in Alzheimer’s. People with the disease and their caregivers too. I bring light for the journey. I teach new skills. I make people laugh, I teach people to find meaning and purpose in the journey of the caregiver. It’s a journey from the mind to the heart. I give people new heart. With that, they can do anything.”

"When care staff understand that all difficult behaviors have meanings, that they are communications about unmet needs, then relevant care happens. This truly creates a nurturing environment for residents with dementia and also for the staff. When that happens, residents do better and so do the staff. When staff find real meaning in their work, this reduces the turnover of staff."

All over the world, people in a wide variety of cultures have the same struggles to understand dementia. No country, no culture and no ethnic group has an easy grasp of what people with dementia need. In fact, dementia often creates a wall of shame around a family. Even societies assumed to have a deep respect for elders struggle unsuccessfully with the issues of Alzheimer's.

Frena Gray-Davidson has lived, worked and studied extensively in other cultures. She studied Traditional Chinese Medicine and Acupuncture in Hong Kong for five years, working in a free clinic in Kowloon under the supervision of her teacher, 4th generation Chinese healer, Dr Butt Chak-Kai. During the same period, she also studied Tai Chi for five years with Martial Arts Master Ha Kwok-Cheung. In Bali she continues to study extensively with traditional Balinese healer Cokorda Rai, the brother of the last King of Bali.

It is from experiencing the range and depth of other cultures that Frena Gray-Davidson has drawn many lessons in understanding the inner lives and heart journeys of those with Alzheimer's.

"The lives of people with Alzheimer's are never meaningless. In fact, they are doing exactly the same journey we all do—trying to find the peace and resolution necessary for a happy life and a good death. Their illness complicates this journey, but we CAN find the keys to the mysteries of WHY they do what they do. No behavior is meaningless in Alzheimer's. Once we understand that, we release people from their prison of loneliness. This is true for caregivers, for care staff and also for the person with dementia."

When family members understand the journey of the individual with dementia, caregiving changes to a mutual exploration of how to remake connection, love and resolution. This brings light to the journey. Once caregivers understand that their care can bring about great spiritual and emotional transformation in another human being, everything becomes suffused with that energy. Much can be healed even if everything can't be fixed.

Frena was born and raised in London, England. She trained as a journalist and feature writer on a local London weekly, the Croydon Advertiser, after which she went to Asia. She lived in Nepal for two years, working at the United Nations Development Program in Nepal and becoming the NBC Radio Correspondent for Nepal. She also taught at the British Council in Kathmandu.

From Nepal, she moved to Hong Kong where she worked on the Hong Kong Standard and then became a freelance journalist and stringer for BBC Radio in London. She traveled extensively throughout the region, writing guidebooks to Thailand and Sri Lanka, as well as several books on Chinese culture and healing. She also had two fantasy novels published. Arriving in the USA in 1986, she became involved in the world of Alzheimer’s and caregiving and went on to write books on caregiving and on Alzheimer’s and other aspects of health and healing.

In California, she was the founding director of a non-profit Alzheimer’s education organization and began teaching Alzheimer’s and dementia care to family members and professional care staff. She was a dementia care trainer for the state licensing department of small care homes and also taught at Alta Bates, Mount Diablo Day Care Center, the Jewish Home for the Aged in SF.

During this time, she began to be in demand as a public speaker, teacher and Alzheimer’s educator nationally and internationally. She has been a keynote speaker and trainer for the Royal Alzheimer’s Disease Society in England as well as the Departments of Aging in Hawaii, North Dakota, Montana, California, American Samoa. She is a frequent speaker at Alzheimer’s Association Conferences all over the USA, as well as a regular broadcaster and newspaper columnist on issues of caregiving and age. She has been a keynote presenter on Alzheimer’s for the Morton Plante Hospital in Florida, for care home organizations in many states, for the Lyndon Johnson Hospital in Pago Pago, American Samoa. She frequently appears on radio call-in programs dealing with caregiver issues and is the author of 18 books, both fiction and non-fiction, many on caregiving and Alzheimer’s.

“At this point, the biggest issue facing Alzheimer’s caregivers is spiritual despair. Together, I can demonstrate how we can travel to a place of hope. By helping caregivers understand how to meet the needs of those they care for, while also caring for themselves, that despair is vanquished. At that point, caregivers once more take up their own spiritual journey and follow that road to fulfillment,” says Frena. "It is not Alzheimer's that makes people despair. It is the feeling that the journey is meaningless. Once people can make sense of the journey, they are released from despair."

“With professional care workers, I deal with their work issues. There are legal requirements these days that facilities must demonstrate that so-called difficult behaviors have been dealt with by social intervention, before any chemical restraints can be used. Of course, also, as we all know, heavy medication can also especially harzardous for elders. I show staff HOW to create successful interventions by doing the following:

• understanding the inner meaning of behaviors;
• creating care plans that really work on such behaviors;
• making an environment of care which nurtures the spirit.

Care staff have to make successful heart relationships with people with dementia. That’s the only way to soothe the terror and loneliness of those we care for. I teach increased skills in doing that and give them a set of tools that can be used under almost any circumstances to solve these problems.”

"The so-called difficult behaviors of dementia are actual communications about the needs and feelings of those with Alzheimer’s." Frena Gray-Davidson

“Difficult behaviors arise when poor interventions and failed communications frighten the person with dementia. Staff can learn to decode behaviors and answer needs. They can learn what works and what skills to use so that these behaviors do not occur. No dementia behavior is intractable. The secret is to work on finding what works. I have created a 3-Point Plan for Problem-Solving which will almost totally remove their occurrence.

Frena Gray-Davidson’s approach has been called “brilliant and inspiring” by the British Royal Alzheimer’s Disease Society. Her books have been described by Dr Tom Kitwood, of the ground-breaking and internationally-renowned Bradford Dementia Project as “The best books on Alzheimer’s I’ve ever read.”

Frena Gray-Davidson is expert in Alzheimer’s behavioral management from 20 years of living and working with people with Alzheimer’s. She began in the work of Alzheimer’s care in 1986. She currently owns a small residential care home for elders, Rosemary House, in which she puts her expertise to daily practice.

Using the lessons of living in a multi-cultural background, she learned Alzheimer’s from people with Alzheimer’s. This innovative approach enabled her to observe and bring some new ideas to the picture we have of Alzheimer’s.

• she was the first to write that people with Alzheimer’s tended to have experienced unusual hardship in their childhood;
• she was the first to write that the so-called final stage of Alzheimer’s actually only occurred rarely, to 1 person in about 35. Everyone else dies of the normal health conditions of old age;
• she was the first to write that people with dementia self-medicate their anxiety with walking;
• she has successfully created care plans which can eliminate sun-downing entirely;
• she has created the Three-Point Plan which enables almost all so-called difficult behaviors to be solved;
• she uses and recommends
  the therapeutic use of aromatherapy and music in residential environments, with very good results.

With her practical knowledge of Alzheimer’s behaviors Frena became a trainer for the professional care-givers for the California Residential Home Licensing Department. She was a staff trainer in dementia for Hillhaven, Alameda. She has also given presentations and trainings for:

• the Florida Association of Nursing Homes;
• Bethany Homes in North Dakota;
• Royal Alzheimer’s Disease Society of Great Britain;
• Lyndon B. Johnson Hospital of Tropical Diseases in American Samoa;
• Morton Plante Hospital in Florida;
• Hawaii State Department of Aging;
• the Montana State Ombudsman for Long Term Care and the Alzheimer’s Association of Montana;
• Oregon Coast College;
• California Department of Health and Human Services;
• Siuslaw Community College;
• the Caregiver Foundation of Arizona;
• Area Agency on Aging Southern Arizona;
• and many more.