With around 163,000 new diagnoses every year, dementia has been described as ‘one of the greatest challenges for medicine, nursing and society in the twenty-first century'. We're told that the number of people aged over 65 years is expected to increase by more than 60% in the next 25 years. In fact, while an estimated 700,000 people are currently diagnosed with dementia, 15,000 of them young people, this figure is expected to increase to one million by 2025. This is likely to be a major underestimate by up to three times because of the way the data relies on referrals to services.
The thought of one million people, and more, with dementia is a frightening prospect. Some nurses tell us that they received absolutely no education on dementia at university. Conclusion? They need to provide some! If such a crucial area of health care is being ignored by our univerisities, it gives the impression that it isn't very important, which belittles those with dementia.
Interestingly, two thirds of people with dementia are women.
It has long been known that the brains of women differ from men, one aspect being their ability to cross-connect via brain pathways, enabling them to multi-task.
Evolution probably has something to say about this, women being required to do several household tasks at the same time, whilst men needed to concentrate on one major task at a time. However, has women's vital ability to cross-connect caused them to be vulnerable to plaque build-up right across their brain cells?
What we do know is that the proportion of people with dementia doubles for every five year age group. One third of people over 95 have dementia. Delaying the onset of dementia by five years would reduce deaths directly attributable to dementia by 30,000 a year
Previous reports by the Alzheimer's Society show that dementia costs the UK an incredible £17 billion a year. Yet family carers of people with dementia save the UK over £6 billion a year. And, two thirds of people with dementia live in the community while one third live in a care home.
What should we be doing?
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Dementia should be made a national health and social care priority.
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There needs to be a substantial increase in publicly funded dementia research, and improvements in elementary nurse and doctor training in this area.
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Improve dementia care skills.
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Develop community based support.
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Improve carer support.
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Introduce a national debate on who pays for care.
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Develop a comprehensive integrated dementia care model.
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Educate the public to eat a Mediterranean diet which has been proved to reduce the threat of getting dementia, e.g. oily fish and dark-coloured vegetables rich in anti-oxidants.
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Educate the public how to recognise early-onset of dementia from normal old-age memory lapses, e.g. the ‘key' test. If you enter a room and momentarily can't remember why - that's normal. If you pick up a car key and suddenly don't know how to use it - that could be the start of dementia, so get it checked out.
