My Dad has dementia, depression, continuing weight loss, and macular degeneration. Although living in an assisted living wing of wonderful retirement community he shows NO interest in participating in activities, improving himself through physical therapy, or even going to mealsunless strongly encouraged. He stays often in bed until noon. Antidepressant had adverse side-effect. Lived large in younger years building and flying airplanes, traveling, etc. Now is not driving, or expressing interest in anything. Help! I'm sad, depressed, and feeling helpless about helping him feel better about life.
What you can still do for your father is keep turning up, and keep talking to him as you naturally would. You might not get much response, there might be a lot less evident interest and enthusiasm than would have been the case before, but what I'm seeing with my mother is that although you can't tell from her tone or her expression she is genuinely pleased to hear from or hear news about her family. Don't let him cut himself off from the people he cares about, that's all.