stage: 3

When dementia speech stops making sense — what's still being communicated and how to respond

Incoherent or nonsensical speech typically becomes more pronounced in the middle to late stages of dementia, corresponding to around stages 5 to 7. In the middle stages, word-finding problems can lead to sentences that lose their thread or contain substitute words that do not quite fit. By the later stages, speech may become a stream of words or sounds that have no clear meaning, sometimes called jargon aphasia. The emotional content behind the speech is still real, even if the words do not make sense. Responding to tone and emotion rather than literal meaning, and offering reassurance through touch, are effective ways to connect with someone whose verbal communication has significantly deteriorated.