Dementia: a serious and enduring mental illness.

: At the 1997 RCN Congress, the RCN Mental Health and Older People Forum put forward a matter for debate--how the definition of 'serious and enduring mental illness' affects services to people with dementia. Subsequently, the RCN agreed both a position paper, which includes dementia in the definition, and an action plan for dissemination and support of the RCN position. Alison Soliman describes the background to the position paper.