It is quite rough. The problem is that quite a few new residents are people with dementia who aren’t on proper meds, as they either lived alone or with little to no support from their family. So no regular appointments at a doctor’s office and barely any prescriptions. The ugly truth with dementia is that those who are affected by it often need sedatives/tranquilizers for the night as a sleep aid, since their condition causes them to have an altered day-night-rhythm (similar to how we night shift nurses train our bodies to adapt, but in their case it’s happening unwillingly). Otherwise, they can’t sleep for the whole night with all the side effects: they are more prone to falls, they react cranky to downright aggressive and so on. Some of them in the early stages of dementia also realize that something’s wrong, they are sad that they can’t sleep and ask what the hell is happening with them. I always try to speak slow, calm and with a deep voice to them since this seems to calm them down a bit and they are less likely to feel bad about themselves when I explain that it’s not their fault.