Suggestions for dealing with false accusations

4auntcat

My aunt has been accusing my nephew’s wife of stealing from her all the time when she only met her once about a year ago. She also accused my nephew of taking three remote controls from her house but I was there and he didn’t. She also lost her wallet and her keys to her house and car. I tried to help her look for them with no luck. After I got home she called me and wanted to know why I took her keys. I have read advice to humor people when they are imagining things but how do you handle false accusations?

star26

In my opinion, the most concerning issue here is that she's living alone and driving. 

Are the false accusations a problem for people that know she has dementia, or is the problem that she's confused and can't keep track of her wallet, house and car keys, etc.? 

harshedbuzz

4auntcat-

Welcome to the little club nobody ever wants to join. I'm sorry you have a need to be here.

It sounds as if your sister is having false beliefs which can be hard on those who are being accused. BTDT, dad had false beliefs and a lot of conflated memories where he recalled the gist of a past event but backfilled the forgotten bits with random details. An example of the former would be dad accusing me of short selling his house and netting $350K less than it was worth; the latter was when he accused me of getting drunk and leaving my son with a bartender while I went off with some guy I met at the bar. 

The best advice given is to 1) grow a thick skin against the coming insults generated by a diseased and damaged brain and, more importantly, 2) validate the feelings behind the accusation even if you are the one being accused. Some people find they can redirect and distract away from an accusation; dad was fairly far along before that was a viable option.

At first I didn't buy into this wise advice when it was offered, especially as dad and I never got along and these scripts weren't all that different than what I grew up with. But I tried it the first time with the real estate accusation. I just said "Dad, I'm sorry I sold the house for so little. You must be so disappointed. I won't ever do that again."- he did not know what to do with the apology and the conversation moved onto something else. A few weeks later when he started on it again, my husband looked at him and said "How about that game yesterday? I think the Eagles are Super Bowl material". Dad couldn't hold onto the gripe and went with the game talk.

Another piece to this was dad getting into a fixation of a sexual nature reporting activities which would result in an arrest. Those we shut down every time, gently and with humor. But shut down and housebound for the duration. I also shut down his belief that my mother had left him which pained him a great deal. He was always happier after I told him how much she adored him and how he was so superlative in every way I was sure she never looked at another man. Alas, I was the only one who could jolly him out of that one, so I spent weeks "on call" to deal with it when he got stuck.

That said, is this nephew her son? Is there a spouse in this scenario? It does sound like auntie is fast approaching a time when she might need 24/7 supervision and certainly stop driving.

Ginsamae

I feel your frustration. My MIL continually accuses me (falsely) of raising her rent and charging her 'extra' rent for things like eating meals at the table with DH and me. We've informed the family who matter as to what is actually happening and to hell with everyone else.

MIL has also been accusing our 18 year old daughter of stealing from her - first it was clothing, then it moved to gift cards and now it's 'silver' coins. In all instances, our daughter is innocent and the missing items (which MIL says she found on our daughter's bed) were located - under MIL's pillow, in her suitcase, in the car, etc. However, MIL will still accuse our daughter all the time. Again, we've notified the family who matter as to what is actually happening and to hell with the rest.

In many cases of these events happening we are able to validate her feelings - oh, it's wrong of (daughter) to do that, I'll talk with her when she gets home from work about staying out of your room - and then change the subject - hey, today is Memorial Day, do you want a hamburger or hotdog when we start grilling? Food ALWAYS gets MIL's mind off of the 'stolen' items!

John2.0.1

These false accusations are very frustrating yet all too common with dementia.

My mom is constantly accusing staff of stealing things from her room when what has happened is that she has hidden things and doesn't remember.

I have found nearly everything my mom has accused staff of stealing and no amount of reminding her that they were not stolen sinks in. She will resort to claiming staff had hidden her cookies to play tricks on her.

Then the next day she claims that they are stolen again.

4auntcat

The problem is definitely that she can’t keep track of her wallet and house keys

ButterflyWings

Hmm, I guess you can't leave a post in the middle of composing it, search for a link in the "solutions" tab above, and come back without losing what you wrote to begin with. Ha.

OK - let's try this again!

My DH accuses me all the time, but of "little" things, so I suppose I'm lucky. For now, I just say "No, I didn't take your wallet ", "No, I didn't do that/move it/throw it way", or "wasn't me, I don't have that, haven't seen it...but I will help you look". "Let's do that as soon as we eat this, etc." Usually it distracts him and keeps me happy too. I really don't want to start admitting to something I didn't do, and get him in the habit of believing his accusations are correct, that I'm stealing from him, betraying him or whatever his impaired brain may come up with. That seems to be asking for trouble, at least in our case with the way my DH latches on to some beliefs and won't let go. 

So far, it hasn't caused any catastrophic reactions for me to say "Nope, but I will help you find it". It usually is about his wallet or something he misplaced. So far, he finds it pretty quickly, (or forgets he was looking for it) so...  I know that's a lot simpler than some of the terrible false beliefs and accusations others here are experiencing. Accusing me is bad enough, but it my child was the target I'd be very concerned. Harming my child's emotional wellbeing living with such accusations would be a deal-breaker for me. Not sure exactly what I'd do, but would definitely be looking to make a change. That's just not healthy, and we love our PWD, but caregivers and others matter too.

**Note, I did take the car keys (all of them, in a series of covert operations) and go figure, he only asked a couple of times about that. My answer was the same. Fiblet? A whopper of a lie. Because it was the right and safe thing to do, and also kindest way to avoid debating with him which would only have caused stress and bad feelings...if his reasoner and judgement were so clearly broken as indicated by his blaming everyone else for all kinds of things he couldn't keep track, then that was one of many signs he definitely did not need to be driving (and trying to make multiple split-second judgements and decisions to safely control a speeding hunk of metal that could hurt or kill him, or others.) Not sure if this is what Star was getting at, 4auntcat but my gentle suggestion is that --accusations aside-- the keys may need to disappear for safety's sake asap.

Here are the links I was trying to grab and convert when the entire post disappeared :

https://www.alz.org/help-support/caregiving/stages-behaviors/suspicions-delusions

8 Ways to Deal with False Dementia Accusations – DailyCaring

verb007

One thing that helped me when mom was doing this was to remember that in her mind, it's not false at all and is very real. Ie, she's not making up lies to intentionally hurt someone, and it's not even her doing it, it's the disease. Part of dementia is often that the person doesn't know they have it, and they don't realize how much brain function has slipped. 

In your aunt's mind, she's probably thinking "I know I didn't loose my wallet because I never loose my wallet. I don't see it, and it couldn't have been me that misplaced it [because my brain is still functioning perfectly well] so someone must have stolen it" 

Since it felt real to Mom, distracting was never very effective, but reassuring and changing the subject was usually successful. Things like "oh no mom, I'm so sorry there's bad people at your memory care facility stealing all your money! I'll call tomorrow and tell them to stop doing that, and next time I'm there visiting we can look for it together" were usually enough to settle her brain in, and then we'd move on to something else. At one particularly delusional point, I went so far as to have a pretend conversation on my cell phone with the police in front of her (I didn't even dial, just held the phone up to my ear) asking them to check on her daughter that she was sure had been kidnapped. She was so grateful that I'd called the police and was taking care of it, and then she was able to relax and settle again.

I dunno, typing it out sounds like I was being condescending and treating her like a child, but the thing is- you have to do what works, and the things that work for a person with dementia don't follow the same rules as the things that would work for an adult with a healthy brain. Don't be afraid to experiment- you'll find strategies as you go along