Art of medicine: On seeing and being seen in dementia care

Abstract

This article reflects on one health care professional's experience of sitting for Mark Gilbert's arts-based Patient and Caregiver Portraiture study. The author, a clinical social worker, discusses the roles of ageism, invisibility, and stigma in the lives of people with dementia. This article also explores the similarity between the process of an artist seeing the entirety of a scene and the process of a clinician assessing a patient; both artist and clinician are powerfully influential in their capacity to represent the personhood of a subject or patient.