How To Shift From The Medical Model To Relationship-Centered Dementia Care
Dementia caregiving often begins where the world tells us to start—with the diagnosis, the symptoms, and the stress. But what if we’ve been starting in the wrong place all along?
In Episode 243, we explore how Christian caregivers can shift from the medical model of dementia care to a relationship-centered, biblically grounded approach—one that brings peace, clarity, and God-honoring purpose to a season that often feels overwhelming.
The Medical and Caregiver Models: Helpful, But Incomplete
Most dementia care today is built around two models:
Patient-Centered Care — Focuses on symptoms, stages, and diagnosis. It’s useful for understanding what’s happening in the brain, but it doesn’t address the whole person—or their spiritual worth.
Caregiver-Centered Care — Emphasizes managing burnout and emotional strain. Again, helpful, but often becomes self-focused, leading to guilt, resentment, or isolation.
Both models are missing something essential: God’s design for relationships and caregiving.
Biblical Caregiving Starts with God’s Design, Not Decline
Scripture teaches us that God is a God of order and relationship.
🕊️ He created us in His image (Genesis 1:27).
🕊️ Our value does not fade with memory loss.
🕊️ Our roles in caregiving are not random—they’re part of His plan.
When we view caregiving through a biblical lens, it becomes a journey of sanctification—a spiritual process where God uses our circumstances to grow us in patience, love, humility, and endurance.
“Caregiving isn’t just about what you do. It’s about who you are becoming.”
Relationships Are the Context—Not the Background
Biblical caregiving considers not just the tasks but the context of the relationship:
👫 Are you a spouse?
👧 Are you an adult child?
👦 Are you a grandchild with influence, but not decision-making authority?
Scripture provides guidance for each role. The fifth commandment and Westminster Catechism help us understand our duties within our place and station—not based on value, but based on God’s appointed order.
“Your caregiving should not come at the expense of your marriage if your spouse isn’t fully on board.”
Caregiving is Sanctifying Work
God doesn’t waste our suffering. Every hard day, every tough decision, every moment of frustration is an opportunity to be shaped into the likeness of Christ.
This is the heart of the Caregiving Dignity by Design framework—seeing caregiving not as a checklist, but as a calling that glorifies God and grows us.
Caregiving that Glorifies God and Changes You
When we shift from a symptom-focused approach to a relationship-centered, God-first mindset, everything changes. We don’t just survive the journey—we walk it with purpose, peace, and perspective.
Let your caregiving be a reflection of God’s love, order, and truth—not the world’s confusion.
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“How To Immediately Reduce Dementia Caregiver Overwhelm and Stress In 3 Easy Steps”
Transcript
[0:00] The medical model taught me to treat the symptoms of dementia as an occupational therapist.
Introduction to Caregiving Perspectives
[0:08] The caregiver model taught me to manage my own stress when becoming a family caregiver. But scripture taught me to glorify God and enjoy Him forever, even in the face of a dementia diagnosis. Today’s episode invites you to think differently about dementia by starting where God starts, with design and not decline.
[0:34] If you are a Christian and you are struggling with God’s sovereignty or God’s providence, reach out to me. I will have a conversation happily with you about God’s providence and God’s sovereignty and help you along in your journey. If you are struggling as a family caregiver and you’re ready for a little bit more support, hop on a Care Companion success call with me. It will take 20 minutes where you will be able to talk to me, gain some clarity about your very next step that you need to take in this journey, as well as have a conversation about whether or not it makes sense for both you and for me for us to work together to help you through your dementia caregiving journey. Hey, Christian Care Companion, welcome to Dementia Caregiver’s Support for Christians, the podcast where I show Bible-believing Christians that God is a God of order and of covenants and relationships, that the way we think about dementia caregiving by starting who God is and how he made us shapes everything about our journey. Because we are made in the image of God, our value doesn’t fade with our memory, and our roles in caregiving are never random. They are designed. If you’re a Christian spouse.
[1:59] The adult child, or a family member of somebody living with dementia, and you want more clarity and less stress, and a God-glorifying caregiving journey, this podcast is for you.
[2:14] Each week, I share practical solutions, communication tips, and a biblical worldview that brings dignity back to dementia care. It is almost the 24th of April, and something very special happens on the 24th of April. At 6 p.m., we will be having our next Ask the Dementia Coach live monthly question and answer session at 6 p.m. This is your opportunity as a listener on this podcast to become a part of the journey, a part of the podcast. You might have noticed over the last several months, these shorter coaching style episodes where audience member is on the podcast in the Ask the Dementia Coach monthly question and answer session. And they bring me questions that are common to everybody navigating a dementia caregiving journey. So I invite you, if you haven’t signed up for one of these, join us this month, April 24th at 6 p.m. For the next Ask the Dementia Coach, where you can get your own questions answered live by me and become a part of this podcast.
Shifting Paradigms in Dementia Care
[3:38] Welcome to today’s episode. Today, we are going to talk about how to shift from the medical model to relationship-centered dementia care. Most of us have heard things like we need to stage the person with dementia, or we have heard things like caregivers burn out. And we all know that it takes forever to get a diagnosis for somebody living with cognitive loss. But what we want to consider today is that many of the dementia care models typically start with either the symptoms of dementia or the caregiver’s stress. But what I want to propose to you today is that Christian caregiving actually begins with God’s design.
[4:32] And right-ordered relationship. And this episode today will expand on our previous solo episode, number 241.
[4:43] Where we actually talked about how a biblical approach to dementia caregiving is revolutionary in the world, because we are positioning Christian caregiving in a biblically grounded and spiritually supported form of caregiving and not the way that the world actually looks at dementia. Now, what we’re going to look at today is three simple, easy points. The first one is that the world starts with a dementia diagnosis, but we actually start as Christian caregivers with God’s design. The second thing that we’re going to look at is that relationships are the context that we are in when we are in a caregiving situation. And we need to keep the context in mind when we are a caregiver. And the third thing that we’re going to look at is that relationship-centered caregiving glorifies God and is part of our sanctification process. And so we’re really going to look at these three points real briefly. Now, one of the things that I started doing as I navigated into this podcast and how the podcast developed over time was I initially started with patient-centered care.
[6:08] Patient-centered care looks at symptoms and decline. It looks at what is going on in the brain, how the brain is changing. It looks at whether it is Alzheimer’s disease or if it is Lewy body dementia or all of these different types of dementias. But it is patient-centered because it’s coming from the medical model. It is coming from looking at who the payer is, for this process.
[6:40] And so whenever you hear the word patient-centered, you know that it is coming out of the medical model. It looks at the symptoms and the person’s decline. And that’s not inherently wrong to consider that the medical model needs to pay for the patient. That’s logical. So I’m not saying that patient-centered is inherently evil or wrong. I’m just starting to reflect that it is not enough. The next part that the world looks at when it looks at a dementia caregiving journey is a caregiver-centered approach where we’re focusing not just on the patient, the person living with dementia, but we are starting to consider the caregiver and the caregiver’s stress and burnout. But there’s really then a different way of looking at it. It then becomes very me-centered as the person who is the caregiver. Now, that also inherently isn’t necessarily wrong. It’s also just incomplete.
[7:48] And Genesis 1 verse 27 really starts and grounds us in a dementia caregiving journey, because this is where God says to us in the Bible that God created man in his own image. Male and female, he created them. And when you look at God in his triune nature, God has always been. He established time. He was before time. He was and is going to be in eternity. And God is triune, which means Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and is in relationship with himself. And he created us, male and female, not because he needed us, because he wanted to, because he is a creator. And he created us in his own image, which means that we are people of relationship. Relationship-centered care starts with God’s design. It looks at man’s dignity and how this whole journey unfolds as a part of our discipleship. Something that makes relationship-centered care or.
[9:06] Christ-centered care. Even more important is because it really focuses on the fact that because we are created in the image of God, our value doesn’t change as our thinking processes change. We are image bearers. We belong to God. We are not just data processors or computers. And this entire methodology that I’m working out and trying very hard to stay biblical with reflects what I have now started to call the Think Different Dementia way, which is a Christian worldview approach that starts our dementia caregiving journey with God’s order and not with the world’s confusion or not with just the dementia diagnosis. I hope that this methodology, this framework, this whole way of looking at dementia will become revolutionary in the world and bring people to Christ because he is the only way.
[10:14] The truth, and the light. And without a Christian worldview, without Christ in your life, without a biblical worldview, the narrative is extremely depressing and sad. Because if you don’t have a biblical worldview of dementia and caregiving, of course you’re going to feel hopeless and helpless. Because it doesn’t frame everything that you were going through, your adversity, your suffering, your struggles, your journey as a caregiver in light of eternity. And so I’m hoping to bring this information to you to really help come alongside
God’s Design in Caregiving
[10:58] you to look at this and look at this process in an entirely different way. So the first point was, the world starts with a dementia diagnosis, but we as Christians start with God’s design. The second thing is that we need to remember that everything is in context.
[11:21] It’s not in isolation. And relationships are also in context. And so when we have that in mind, when you start with the whole context of your relationships, it really starts to narrow down and give you control over things that may feel like they’re out of control right now. So biblical caregiving doesn’t just start with the tasks of caregiving. It starts with the context of.
[11:56] Who is involved? Who are the people that we are caregiving for? Are they spouses caring for another spouse? Is it an adult child caring for a parent? Is there a well spouse still involved?
[12:12] Is it like Tommy who is in my community, who is the active grandson, but he is not the primary decision maker, so his role is influential but not decisional. Where are these roles? Who are these people? And what does scripture actually then tell us about that, the context that you find yourself in? The Westminster Shorter Catechism says that what is required in the fifth commandment? And the answer is the fifth commandment requires the preserving the honor and performing the duties belonging to everyone in their several places and relations as superiors, inferiors, or equals.
[12:59] Now, to clarify, when we’re talking about superiors, inferiors, or equals, we’re not saying a person is less valuable if they are an inferior or equal. It is just relating to our stations and places. So for example, none of us living in the United States would say that we are quote-unquote equal with the President of the United States in his role as the President. He is the President. He is our superior in that regard, but he is not more valuable than what we are as a human because humans have inherent worth. So his station as a superior is related to the place and the relation or inferiors.
[13:51] So for example, if we are parents, our children in that specific relation and place are currently, when we are parenting a two-year-old, they are inferior to us. they are not equal. Husbands and wives are equals. Friends are equals. So when we are looking at the context, we have to consider these concepts in our relationship because it frames how we look at things. And in the Think Different Dementia way, we use a relationship-centered foundation that It helps us clarify every single caregiver and every single person living with dementia’s role. We look at every person’s responsibility and we create.
[14:46] Order and clarity in our caregiving by using that as a basis based on biblical principles to be able to help us make better decisions using God’s designs. Because when we only look at patient-centered care or only look at caregiver-centered care, all of the dementia caregiving techniques will fail if they’re not in the right context or relationship.
[15:17] So for example, one of my clients a year or so ago, when she started working with me, she and her husband were taking care of her mom and they had been on a caregiving journey for over 20 years. And I remember meeting with her and her husband based on observing things that were going on in our coaching community and hearing and seeing her frustration because her husband wasn’t fully on board with her caregiving journey and really looking at that and digging into it with her.
[15:53] We came to a conclusion, I actually sat with him and I’ve mentioned this conversation before and we’re still good friends. He still allows me to come into his space, was I told him, I’m like, you are not on board with her being her mom’s full-time caregiver. And if you cannot be 100% on board with her to be the primary caregiver of her mom, we need to find a different solution. Because from the relationship context, their marriage was primary and her job and desire to take care of her mom was good and right, but not if her husband wasn’t on board. Because after mom passed away, her covenantal relationship with her husband needed to still be in place. And so once we had that conversation, afterwards, she told me he really got on board with helping her and supporting her in order for them to continue to provide 24-hour care to her mom until she passed away in December last year. So the second thing I want you to remember today is that the context of our relationships is important, and that is a biblical principle.
[17:10] Yes, we are required to honor our father and our mother, right? But that does not mean in isolation of the whole context that God has placed us in. God places you in a specific time, in a specific context, in a specific family, in specific relationships, and within all of that,
Contextual Relationships in Caregiving
[17:33] we are to be dementia caregivers or on a dementia caregiving journey. The third thing we’re going to look at today is that relationship-centered care glorifies God and sanctifies us. So we also look, and this also looks at it through the lens of the fifth commandment, that it’s not only applying to us as children to quote-unquote honor fathers and mothers so that your days may be long in the land that the Lord is giving you. That is not the only way, and it’s not just looking at us as minor children honoring our parents or adult children as honoring our parents, but it is.
[18:20] Specifically, as I mentioned, in all of our roles and responsibilities. And as our lives shift, as we journey through life, our roles will shift. So for example, the Bible teaches very clearly that a husband and a wife, when they get married, are supposed to leave and cleave to one another. They then become a separate unit, which is why in relation to the previous point in the context of their marriage, if he wasn’t 100% on board, it wasn’t going to glorify God and have them enjoy him forever. So as our roles shift and caregiving starts to come in, we have to honor it in relation to our roles and our stations and our places. But even further, if our God-given duty is to glorify God and enjoy Him forever, part of this process is our sanctification process. Now, what is sanctification? Sanctification is a work of God’s free grace by which we are renewed in the whole man and after God’s image and are enabled more and more to die unto sin and live unto righteousness.
[19:42] And so caregiving is not just the tasks of caregiving, right? It’s not just a checkoff list that we need to complete to say that we have done this duty. It is a part of our sanctification process. Every single time I get mad at my dad because he can be difficult. For whatever reason in my mind, he is difficult. I am sinning against God and against my dad. And that is a part of my spiritual journey. That is part of my sanctification. It is teaching me the fruits of the Spirit, how to be more patient, how to be more loving, how to be kinder, how to live in peace with other people. Caregiving is not in isolation of our sanctification process. And this is where the lens that I am taking people through, where caregiving dignity by design starts.
[20:50] So caregiving dignity by design helps believers to actually steward their caregiving
Caregiving as a Path to Sanctification
[20:57] role, their caregiving tasks for God’s glory and for their own sanctification process. So caregiving isn’t just about what you do. It is exactly about who you are becoming as you love of somebody who is made in the image of God.
[21:20] Living with dementia in a fallen world. That is the context that we are caregiving in. And caregiving reflects God’s relational order. And when we keep that in mind, it will always produce the peace that surpasses all understanding, even in the decline of the person that we love. So to just recap real quick, what we looked at today is how to shift from the medical model of relationship-centered care, which is where you will hear people like Teepa Snow or other dementia gurus who are coming from the medical model, the techniques, the how-to. The 36-hour day, which I actually do not recommend people read because it is very overwhelming and very negative-based, but all of those techniques are patient-centered.
[22:22] Then we also look at caregiver-centered, and there are some caregiver-centered models out there. One that comes to mind is Care Blazers. It’s very much caregiver-centric, looking at caregivers’ burnout and stress. And as I mentioned, none of that is inherently wrong. And when I work with people, I do use strategies and techniques that work as well as look at caregiver burnout and stress. But we’re not doing it isolated from God’s Word. We’re doing it through His design. The second thing we looked at is relationships are always within a very specific context. And the last thing that we looked at is relationship-centered care glorifies God and sanctifies us. And that your entire journey and this framework that I’m starting to put together called the Think Different Dementia Way, which underneath that we have caregiving dignity by design, which is looking at the whole way of looking at caregiving through God’s lens and not my lens. And so dignity to remind you this isn’t just about the tasks. This isn’t just about the checklist. This is about God using this particular journey.
[23:48] This particular season in your life to sanctify you, to make you more like your Lord and Savior, if you are a Christian, the Lord Jesus Christ. And we were never promised that
Conclusion and Call to Action
[24:02] it would be easy, but we were always promised that He would be with us. And so I know you have found great value in this episode, and I have one last request for you, and that is please share these episodes with someone you love who is a Christian caregiver, and share these episodes and subscribe to the podcast. It helps me to grow the podcast because the reason for this podcast is to reach people in the world with the gospel of Jesus Christ. And as I try to remember to end all of my episodes, may the Lord bless you and keep you. And I hope to see you in the next episode where we are going to look at how to make better caregiving decisions using a Christian dementia caregiving framework. I’ll see you in the next episode.
