In the 1960s Naomi Feil developed an approach which she called ‘validation therapy’. This started to focus on the emotions and feelings of the person with dementia and gave credibility to the experience of the person as being paramount. Using validation is to hold less regard for the content of a person’s speech, for example the facts of what is said, and instead to link with how a person may feel through a person’s tone of voice and their body language.

For example it is usually clear when someone is feeling angry, upset, frustrated or distressed without the person using words to express this. Once there are clues as to how a person may be feeling validation therapy looks to respond to these feelings. For example: ‘I can see you are feeling upset’ (or whatever the emotion is)

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