Dementia (from Latin de- "apart, away," + mens (genitive mentis) "mind"; or "irrationality")
Dementia is a syndrome. It is a descriptive term for a collection of symptoms caused by a number of disorders affecting the brain.
Dementia, a progressive brain dysfunction, leads to a gradually increasing restriction of daily activities. It leads to significantly impaired intellectual functioning that interferes with normal activities and relationships. Affected people lose their ability to solve problems and maintain emotional control, like thinking and orientation and may experience personality changes, social act and behavioral problems, such as agitation, delusions, and hallucinations; lack of comprehension, calculation, learning capacity, language and judgement. Memory loss is a common symptom of dementia. There is also impairment of thinking and of reasoning capacity, and a reduction in the flow of ideas. The processing of incoming information is impaired, in that the individual finds it increasingly difficult to attend to more than one stimulus at a time, such as taking part in a conversation with several persons, and to shift the focus of attention from one topic to another.
Many diseases can lead to dementia, most important being "Alzheimer's disease". Dementia not only affects patients, but also those surrounding them, as most patients require care in the long-term.
SIGNS and SYMPTOMS of Dementia
Important early indications of Dementia:
- Forgetfulness with effects at work
- Difficulties with familiar activities (including absent mindedness)
- Language problems (Difficulty understanding and using misappropriate fillers)
- Problems with spatial and temporal orientation
- Impaired capacity of judgement
- Problems with abstract thinking
- Leaving things behind
- Mood swings and behavioral changes (sudden)
- Personality changes (unexpected anger, jealous or timid)
- Loss of initiative (loss of interest and zest)
- Delusions - Monothematic Delusions, like mirrored self-misidentification
Etiology
Disorders causing dementia:
- Alzheimer’s disease or Huntington’s disease
- Vascular dementia (or multi-infarct dementia), including Binswanger's disease
- Dementia with Lewy bodies (DLB)
- Frontotemporal lobar degeneration (FTLD), including Pick's disease
- Frontotemporal dementia (or frontal variant FTLD)
- Semantic dementia (or temporal variant FTLD)
- Progressive non-fluent aphasia
It can also be a consequence of:
- Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease
- Huntington's disease
- Parkinson's disease
- HIV infection (leading to AIDS dementia complex)
- Head trauma
- Down's syndrome
Treatable causes
Less than 5% of a sample of dementia cases have a potentially treatable cause. These include:
- Hypothyroidism
- Vitamin B1 (thiamine) deficiency
- Vitamin B12, Vitamin A deficiency
- Depressive pseudodementia
- Normal pressure hydrocephalus
- Tumour
Treatment
As with numerous other diseases there is no cure for the illness but medication can improve disease symptoms. There are a number of drugs available today for improving brain function. Typically antidementia or psychotropic drugs are prescribed. Although these drugs do not halt the disease or reverse existing brain damage, they improve symptoms and slow the progression of the disease. This may improve an individual’s quality of life, ease the burden on caregivers, or delay admission to a nursing home. Many people with dementia, those in the early stages, may benefit from practicing tasks designed to improve performance in specific aspects of cognitive functioning. For example:
- People can sometimes be taught to use memory aids, such as mnemonics, computerized recall devices, or note taking.
- Snoezelen rooms that provide patients with a soothing and stimulating environment of light, color, music and scent have been used.
- Need round-the-clock care and supervision to prevent them from harming themselves or others. They also may need assistance with daily activities such as eating, bathing, and dressing.
- Actual care and the organization of the environment
- Physical, emotional and mental activation, with the help of physiotherapists or ergotherapists.
