Dementia: what it is, when you should become concerned, and how you can help others.

January 31, 2023

According to a 2020 report published by the Alzheimer’s and Related Disorders Society of India, there are around 5 million people in India living with dementia.
- Worldwide, 47.5 million people have dementia.
- The number of people living with dementia worldwide is expected to double every 20 years, going up to 135.5 million by 2050.
Dementia:
- Dementia is a clinical syndrome caused by a range of diseases or injuries to the brain.
- The most common cause of dementia is Alzheimer’s disease.
- It is implicated in up to 70% of dementia diagnoses.
Early Symptoms:
- Absent-mindedness, difficulty recalling names and words,
- difficulty retaining new information, disorientation in unfamiliar surroundings, and reduced social engagement; Impairment in recognising visually presented objects (visual agnosia) despite a normal visual field, acuity and colour vision, word-finding difficulties (anomic aphasia).
AdvancedSymptoms:
- Marked memory loss and loss of other cognitive skills,
- reduced vocabulary and less complex speech patterns.
- monosyllabic speech,
- psychotic symptoms,
- behavioral disturbance,
- loss of bladder and bowel control, and reduced mobility.
Prevention:
- The WHO has identified preventing Alzheimer’s disease to be a key element in the strategy to fight the world’s dementia epidemic.
- Economic analyses have found that delaying the onset of the disease by even one year could reduce its prevalence by 11%, while a delay of five years could halve it.
- Prevention programmes usually focus on lifestyle risk factors– such as sedentary behaviour, unhealthy diet, smoking, and excessive alcohol use – together with mental wellbeing and risk of cardiovascular diseases.