COPING WITH ALZHEIMER DISEASE: A QUALITATIVE STUDY 1 Introduction Many countries globally are faced with unprecedented demographic changes from high mortality and fertility to low mortality and fertility, giving rise to an ageing population. Population ageing is profound and enduring, and has major consequences and implications for all facets of human life. With a larger proportion of older people, one of the major concerns is health care. The health of older persons generally declines with age and some illness are more likely to be associated with older people. One of such illness is dementia. As the life expectancies of the general population have dramatically increased since the turn of the century, more and more people are at risk of developing dementia (National Institute of Aging, 2000). Dementia is affecting an increasing number of people every year. According to Ferri et al. (2006), 4.6 million people throughout the world are diagnosed with dementia every year, and the number of people in Europe suffering from dementia will increase to 13 million in 2040; and Wimo et al. (2003) estimates that approximately 63 million worldwide will suffer from this illness by 2030. This has crucial implications since it is an illness that is associated with long-term care (LTC). However, while LTC is an important consideration, the quality of life and how people with dementia cope with the illness are also of much concern, but less dealt into. Dementia can undermine a person’s self-worth and esteem, and affects most aspects of daily living (Preston, Marshall, & Bucks, 2007) affecting one’s quality of life (QOL). Traditionally, the medical model dominated research on dementia, and studies on the lived experiences of people with dement... ... middle of paper ... ...35-341. SABAT, S. R. 2002. Epistemological Issues in the Study of Insight in People with Alzheimer’s Disease. Dementia, 1, 279-293. STEEMAN, E., DE CASTERLÉ, B. D., GODDERIS, J. & GRYPDONCK, M. 2006. Living with early-stage dementia: a review of qualitative studies. Journal of Advanced Nursing, 54, 722-738. SUGARMAN, J., CAIN, C., WALLACE, R. & WELSH-BOHMER, K. A. 2001. How Proxies Make Decisions about Research for Patients with Alzheimer's Disease. Journal of the American Geriatrics Society, 49, 1110-1119. WALD, D. S. 2004. Bureaucracy of ethics applications. WHO. 1993. The ICD-10 Classification of Mental and Behavioural Disorders: Diagnostic criteria for research. In: WHO (ed.). Geneva: World Health Organisation. WIMO, A., WINBLAD, B., AGUERO-TORRES, H. & VON STRAUSS, E. 2003. The magnitude of dementia occurrence in the world. Alzheimer Dis Assoc Disord, 17, 63-7.
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Show MoreDementia is common among a large population of elderly people. The disease affects not only the individual diagnosed, but also the caregivers that work towards making their life comfortable in the end. Understanding and learning about the disease is crucial in helping those that experience or live with someone who has dementia. The services and support that are currently in affect for elderly people with dementia and the caregivers is poor, and ineffective because of the lack of research and information on the topic.
Understanding how the brain processes and stores memories has important implication. Dementia is a liberal term that refers to the decline and impairment of speech communication, abstract thought, memory and other cognitive functions. This cognitive disruption occurs to such an extent that they interfere with daily activities Dementia is not a disease itself. Instead, it depicts it describes a group of symptoms that frequently accompanies a disease or a condition. Although, it might initially seem disturbing to consider that half of the adult population will experience the symptoms of a mental disorder. Psychological symptoms without becoming completely debilitated and needing professional intervention most people clearly seem to manage
Worldwide, 35.6 million people have dementia and there are 7.7 million new cases every year (WHO 2012). There are ma...
Alzheimer’s is a form of dementia that affects the brain. There is no cure for it but many treatments. Alzheimer’s is fatal and there are few stages of dementia. It is the 6th leading cause of death, more than 5 million Americans have it, and 15,5 million caregivers gave around 17.7 billion hours of unpaid care that cost around $220 billion in 2013. In my family, my grandmother who is 86 years old has very early stages of Alzheimer’s. She started having symptoms when she was 81. My grandfather took most of the care of her but as he got ill my aunt Kathy took over. When my grandfather got ill and had to be in 24 hour care, we all agree to put my grandmother in assisted living care 10 minutes from one of my aunt’s house.
While there is little difference between dementia and Alzheimer it is important to distinguish the two. Dementia is, “ a general term for a decline in mental ability severe enough to interfere with daily life” (Alzheimer Association, 2014). While Alzheimer is, “is a ...
In most facilities an initiative lifestyle has been organized to give people with dementia a voice in how and where they are cared for (White). This is how things should be everywhere in the world when it comes to people with dementia. People affected by this disease don’t need people to tell them what to do or make decisions for them, they need the freedom to do it themselves so they don’t give up. Although incapacity is common, many persons with dementia are capable of making their own medical and research decisions (Kim, Karlawish, and Caine). At the early stages of dementia, a will needs to be made so medical wishes can be granted. When people are given the freedom of choice, they are much happier, they live longer, and they have a better attitude about the disease they are suffering from. Individuals that get dementia did not get it by choice, but they live through it day by day with strength and the ability to live
As Alzheimer’s disease progresses, People become less able to carry out usual functions and activities. This is due to the death of large number of brain cells. One of the functions impaired by the disease is communication skill. Since people with AD have trouble remembering things, communication is hard for them. It may be hard for them to find words or forget what they want to say. When talking, the disease also causes people to talk without train of thought. The listening role is also affected by the disease. People can have problems with understanding what words mean, paying attention during long conversations and even find it very hard to block out backgr...
Dementia is a term describing multiple chronic conditions relating to the degeneration of brain function such as language, memory, perception, personality and cognitive skills (------). Approximately 80% of dementia is alzheimer's disease (------). Around 10 percent of people will develop some kind of dementia in their lives (-----). The causes of dementia are not well known (------), however, obesity, smoking, high blood pressure and diabetes are considered risk factors (------). The severity of dementia varies widely depending on many factors but is considered to be irreversible and progressive in nature
Dementia is a disorder which results in loss of thinking, remembering, and reasoning to the extent where behavioral abilities interfere with a person’s daily life and activities. It is a set of symptoms affecting the brain which causes memory loss, starts slowly and increases with loss of the ability to function. In the beginning stages of dementia, a person can still function normally, but as the disorder progresses the activities such as driving, cooking, ironing or boiling a kettle of water becomes difficult, risky and should be monitored. The ability to focus and communicate is so confusing as to where they are, where they are going and sometimes starts wandering and get lost. It was so heartbreaking for me when my mom was diagnosed with
It is an inevitable fact that the twenty-first century will be impacted by the largest geriatric population of any century. In 2015, the World Health Organization announced that currently 47.5 million people on earth are living with dementia and approximately 7.7 new cases are surfacing every year (WHO, 2015). The U.S.public health system is at a point where it will have to focus its efforts on an entirely different approach to accommodate the growing elderly population that live with dementia. “Dementia is a neurocognitive disorder caused by various brain illnesses that affect perception, cognition and motor function” (Ridder & Gummesen, 2015). Dementia directly affects quality of life (QOL) of the elderly, and it can impair “participation,
Dementia is referred to as a condition in which an individual’s everyday life is so fragmented and/or ripped away from reality that he or she loses the ability to reason and think clearly (Berk, 2014). According to Prince et al., 2013, dementia strikes 13% of adults over the age of 65 in the United States and other Western nations (as cited in Berk, 2014). Additionally, dementia causes an individual to experience persistent memory lapses and can be caused by many different reasons like the development of Alzheimer’s disease, stress, depression, PTSD, etc. With this in mind, Dasha Kipers’ article, “Hope Is the Enemy”, goes in depth about what it is like for an individual who suffers from dementia. Furthermore, the article begins in 2010 when Dasha moved into an apartment with a 98-year-old man named Mr. Schecter, who was a Holocaust survivor dealing with the beginning stages of dementia. As Dasha and Mr. Schecters relationship developed, Dasha began to realize Mr. Schecters behavior: putting laundry detergent in the oven, forgetting which floor he lived on, and Mr. Schecters repetitiveness. Thus, in the end of Dasha’s article, Dasha explains that dementia affects not only the victims, but the caregivers as well by making their lives fragmented, skewed, and redundant (Kiper, 2015). For that reason, dementia is seen as being a condition in which everyone involved in
The age groups included those who were sixty-five to seventy-four, seventy-five to eight-four, and eighty-five and beyond. There was an estimate of 4.5 million individuals affected with Alzheimer’s Disease in the year 2000. Of those 4.5 million people, seven percent of them were from the sixty-five to seventy-four age group, fifty-three percent were from the seventy-five to eight-four age group, and forty percent were from the eighty–five and beyond. The data also showed an estimate of substantial increase in people with Alzheimer’s Disease by 2050. There will be a three-fold increase in the widespread of the disease reaching 13.2 affected people by the year 2050. There is definite uncertainty of these estimates because the estimates were derived from the middle-series US Census Bureau estimates of population
“Difficult, depressing, and tragic” are a few of the descriptions generally associated with illness. Those who suffer from dementia, especially, undergo a realm of these characterizations. With this adversity in mind, most people generate a basic understanding based on education rather than personal experience. It is this preconception that can prevent us from gaining a true insight of one’s reality.
In a persons typical aging process, they will encounter many different changes in their lives. Some changes might result to be better than others, however not everyone will have the same effects. Authors of Gerontology: for the healthcare professional, Robnett and Chop state, “We need to consider whether the negative physical and cognitive changes that occur in older people result from the aging process or from the accumulation of poor lifestyle choices”. (Robnett & Chop, 104). For some, the aging process involves cognitive changes in which disorders such as Dementia and Alzheimer’s can present themselves early on. The proposal for this essay is to look at those two diseases, but to first understand what cognition is and what it means in reference
Dementia is composed of several diseases, the most prominent being Alzheimer’s disease. [1] According to the World Health Organization, Alzheimer’s disease accounts for 60 to 70 percent of dementia cases.[1] About 47 million people have been diagnosed with dementia, that estimated to grow three times as much by the year of 2050 to nearly 132 million people.