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Unit 40 Dementia Essay

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Dementia is a progressive disorder that will affect how you’re brain functions and particularly your ability to remember, think and reason. Dementia usually affects older people and are approximately 820,000 people in the UK with the disorder, and around 15,000 are under the age of 65. If the dementia is recognised early enough that are a lot of things that you can be done to make the quality of life better. In a lot of dementia cases the symptoms and quality of life will progress and get worse over a number of years. The most common symptoms of a dementia patient are: * Forgetfulness, maybe forgetting names of people that you have been in contact with every day, or forgetting what you did just hours or days ago. * Having …show more content…

Some effects may be that they may not remember things that they have done days ago but they may clearly remember things such as World War Two. This may have an effect on a person’s self esteem as they will be noticing the change in their behaviour and memory and it will make them think about what has changed and because of their short memory they may get worried that something bad has happened to them but they cannot remember. It can also effect self esteem and a person’s confidence because if they lose the ability to communicate and understand what people are saying to them they may shut down and just ignore everyone that they come into contact with as they may feel embarrassed about their lack of communication. Alzheimer’s disease can have a big effect on family members around the person with the disease; it would be upsetting seeing a loved one got through such a major change in their behaviour and their mental capability. If you live with someone with Alzheimer’s and they are wondering in the middle of the night and have sleep difficulties and this can disturb the family in the house. Also if they are wondering around in the middle of the night around the community the police may pick them up, meaning they are again disturbed as the police will need to contact someone to make sure that the person is ok. There are also worries about financial problems that the Alzheimer’s sufferer may have, if they cannot manage

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