World Delirium Awareness Day 2025

Today is World Delirium Awareness Day and this year’s theme is ‘Clear Minds: Raising Delirium Awareness‘

Let’s do this!

I’m not going to quote facts and figures. I want to, but I’m not going to. I’m not a medical expert…..but I am an expert in my own experience, so let’s start there.

Now, if you’ve been following me for a while, you’ll know I talk a LOT about delirium and I talk a LOT about MY experience. Often repeating myself, banging the same drum, over and over again. I’ve been doing it for almost 5 years…… and still so little is known about the impact of delirium on patients, their relatives and how to prevent or ease it……….

Let’s start with me, again! My experience of Delirium was absolute hell. Let’s not minimise it, the words above barely come close, but they’re as close as I’ll ever get.

Although I came through Delirium, Delirium has never really left me. The impact of Delirium was massive and continues to be an almost constant piece of baggage in my life. In my own personal experience, it follows me around, hand in hand with my PTSD goblin and reminds me every now and then of a little piece I’d not remembered or had forgotten. It never fails to remind me that it’s still there.

So the question is, how do we raise awareness?

For me, it’s about sharing my story as far and wide as possible, promoting the work of others and raising awareness of ways to help improve, lessen and maybe one day erase Delirium………how amazing would that day be!

What can you do? Put your patient first, put yourself in their shoes. As I often say, when someone is experiencing Delirium, they will most likely have little awareness of reality and regardless of all the tests and diagnostics, you won’t know if they think they’re being tortured, flying a plane or simply in the moment. We have to remember that this is the reality for that person, at that time. What you can do is make them feel safe, make them feel heard and give them that connection to the ‘real’ world.

Share with others what works for you and your teams, the more we share and educate each other, the quicker we will improve things. It’s not a time for keeping useful information or anecdotes to ourselves, let’s help each other and most importantly, let’s help our patients.

So let’s keep raising awareness and let’s keep banging that drum!