Dementia is a progressive brain dysfunction (in Latin dementia means irrationality), which results in a restriction of daily activities and in most cases leads in the long term to the need for care. Many diseases can result in dementia, the most common one being Alzheimers disease.
How common is dementia?
In our society of longer lifetime the probability of suffering from dementia increases with advancing age. Dementia predominantly occurs in the second half of our life, often after the age of 65 - some experts think that this is the price society has to pay for our higher life expectancy and therefore the term dementia activates similar fears and repression mechanisms as cancer or AIDS.
The frequency of dementia increases with rising age from less than 2 % for the 65-69-year-olds, to 5 % for the 75-79 year-olds and to more than 20 % for the 85-89 year-olds. Every third person over 90 years of age suffers from moderate or severe dementia (Bickel, Psycho 1996, 4-8). About half of those affected by dementia suffer from Alzheimers disease. ... So both aspects are present: dementia is not familiar but also not entirely alien to us. ...
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What are the most important early indications of dementia? ... People with dementia possibly not only forget the pot on the stove but also that they have cooked at all. ... Dementia sufferers often cannot remember simple words and instead they use inappropriate fillers which makes it difficult to understand the sentences. ... Dementia sufferers might be in their own street and no longer know where they are, how they got there and how to get home again. ... Dementia sufferers sometimes wear totally inappropriate clothes. ... Dementia patients can often neither recognise numbers nor carry out simple calculations. ... Dementia sufferers however might put things in completely inappropriate places, such as for example the iron in the fridge or a watch in the sugar bowl.
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