The Definition Of Dementia

Great Essays
The reminiscence of the previous day flashes in the brain, yet she knows nothing of the preceding day. Walking through an unfamiliar home and seeing all these photos of a familiar face amongst many unknown faces, this is what it is like to wake up as a person who has dementia. When people first started to recognise dementia they called it senility and then later on the name changed to dementia (“Types of Dementia”). Many people believe that they understand the definition of dementia, but the definition they have been taught for a long time is actually wrong. Dementia is an umbrella term used to describe a person who has trouble with carrying out everyday activities and has a hard time remembering people (Snow). Dementia is symptom of a specific …show more content…
Vascular dementia makes up twenty percent of the diagnoses of dementia (Fletcher). Vascular dementia can develop after the occurrence of a stroke. This dementia is created due to the poor quantity of blood going through the veins to the brain (Woods). It can also be due to damages or any injuries to the brain like a hit in the head. This could cause internal bleeding in the brain which would lead to the development of Vascular dementia. As seen to the right in figure 1, which depicts a normal brain and then a brain with Vascular disease. There is a clear difference between them because the one with Vascular disease (bottom) has holes in it. The holes in the brain are what cause memory loss. People who suffer from this condition often are bad at decision making, planning, and organizing things in their lives (“Types of Dementia”). Compared to a person with Alzheimer’s, one with Vascular dementia have a more rapid rate of memory loss, meaning they have more of a sudden memory loss (“About Dementia”). A patient with Vascular dementia would also have the emotion of not caring, also called being nonchalant. It’s not something the person can fix, and therefore the caregiver will have to be very patient and calm when caring for him. Getting angry will just make everything worse. For someone who as been diagnosed with this dementia, he …show more content…
This disease or dementia is extremely rare (“Types of Dementia”). Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease is so rare that only one out of one million have this disease. It is caused by an abnormal protein in the body. There are three subcategories that of Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease can be broken down into: sporadic, familial, and acquired. Sporadic is when it is found spontaneously. Doctors have no notifications or signs of it showing or starting. They only recognize it when it is too late. Sporadic makes up eighty-five percent of all the Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease cases. Familial is when it is hereditary, and in the genes. This makes up ten to fifteen percent of Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease cases. Last is acquired, this is when someone has come in contact with bovine spongiform encephalopathy which is found in cows. This is why it is often called “mad cow disease”. This makes up only one percent of all Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease cases (“Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease”). People with this dementia have bad coordination, and drastic behavior changes, along with memory problems(“Types of

Related Documents

  • Great Essays

    What is dementia? Dementia is an illness or disease of the brain that includes memory loss and leads an individual to experience difficulties with thinking, problem solving and language. In the beginning the changes will be small and gradually become severe enough to affect an individual’s daily life.…

    • 1482 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Great Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Dementia Syndrome Essay

    • 1042 Words
    • 5 Pages

    Dementia actually just wipes memory in a sporadic fashion. A patient does not even necessarily lose whole memories, just pieces of various memories. Dementia can also affect a person’s ability to create new short term memories, which is where the misunderstanding comes from. Memory loss is usually the first sign of Alzheimer’s dementia because the syndrome affects the hippocampus section of the brain first.…

    • 1042 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Great Essays

    P1: Describe types of dementia and common signs and symptoms Dementia is what’s known as an “irreversible brain disorder affecting different parts of the brain, causing an effect on a range of functions” Bartle (2007). Every from of dementia is a progressive condition, this means that the brain will become damaged more over time, this therefore means a person’s ability to remember, communicate and understand what goes on around them may will decline. When researches such as scientists look at dementia they find that the progression of dementia will alter between different individuals as they may experience different stages of dementia. When identifying and diagnosing dementia in people often in later adulthood they will look at what stage…

    • 2127 Words
    • 9 Pages
    Great Essays
  • Improved Essays

    In this video of the Charlie Rose Brain Series it discuss the alzheimer disease and the frontotemporal dementia. The alzheimer disease is considered as the loss of memory while the frontotemporal dementia is characterized by language and behavior dysfunction. Both of these diseases are generative that not only affect the individual who has this disease because it also affect the people that is around this individual. Alzheimer is known as the most common degenerative brain disease.…

    • 1067 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Dementia is an umbrella term. By this I mean that it covers many different conditions. Each condition affects the brain and can lead to dementia due to brain de deterioration and loss of function. Wernicke-Korsakoff syndrome- this is a brain disorder in which not getting enough B1 vitamin will affect your brain function. B1 vitamin is used in the brain to change sugar into energy.…

    • 356 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Outline for The Main Effects of Alzheimer’s Dementia. A) INTRODUCTION: There are many different types of Dementia but most common are Alzheimer’s. People are unaware of the effects that their loved ones suffer with when diagnosed with this disease. There are 3 stages of Alzheimer’s that eventually take over the human brain of someone with this disease. The three main symptoms for each stage of Alzheimer’s are stage 1: Memory impairment – memory is affected, not being able to remember people’s names or misplacing object’s.…

    • 552 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Dementia In Brazil

    • 648 Words
    • 3 Pages

    Dementia has been an issue well-known all around the world. It affects many parts of the world in aspects of economy, families, and the victim themselves. The official definition of dementia is, a chronic or persistent disorder of the mental processes caused by brain disease or injury and marked by memory disorders, personality changes, and impaired reasoning. Dementia can be caused by many things, head injuries, strokes, and brain infections. Anyone can get dementia, for example, a motorcyclist can get dementia from a motor accident.…

    • 648 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Decent Essays

    Alzheimer's Dementia

    • 168 Words
    • 1 Pages

    The term dementia is an umbrella term which refers to a loss of cognitive functioning. This may include deficits in processes such as memory, reasoning, language, executive functioning and thinking, all leading to a reduced ability to participate in activities of daily living (NIH.gov). Forms of dementia include: vascular dementia (dementia caused by cerebral vascular injury, often stroke), dementia with Lewy bodies (caused by abnormal deposits of proteins in the brain), Alzheimer’s dementia (the most well-known and common form of dementia), frontotemporal lobar degeneration (including Pick’s disease and primary progressive aphasia), dementia associated with Huntington’s disease, and finally, dementia associated with Parkinson disease.…

    • 168 Words
    • 1 Pages
    Decent Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Dementia Care

    • 467 Words
    • 2 Pages

    Homecare: Alzheimer's Care and Dementia Care Dementia is a progressive cognitive impairment. Alzheimer's disease is the most common form of dementia in seniors (75 percent of cases), but it is not the only kind. Other forms of dementia include vascular dementia, which often follows a stroke; frontotemporal lobar degeneration and corticobasal degeneration, in which areas of the brain start to shrink; and Parkinson's disease dementia. While the causation and prognosis of each dementia type vary, one thing is certain: if your senior loved one has any form of dementia, they are going to require care and support. While caring for a person with dementia is often a true labor of love for family and friends, it also quickly becomes overwhelming.…

    • 467 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Decent Essays

    Providing the Perfect Balance Between Independence and Support with Dementia Care By Charlie Ricker Aug 15, 2012 Dementia is one of the cruelest blows dealt by nature, something that anyone who has ever seen a loved one suffer though it can surely testify to. Dementia is a crushingly progressive disease that can be brought on by a multitude of factors including injury or illness; it can also (in very rare cases) be hereditary. Dementia is a disease that effects about 1% of the population (the majority of which are over the age of 64) of the UK and as such dementia care is an increasingly important sector of the medical industry.…

    • 473 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Decent Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Mrs Moor Dementia Summary

    • 969 Words
    • 4 Pages

    Although Mrs. Moor was able to talk about the past events, she could vaguely recall and describe the details of her stories. In addition, she could not remember her birthday, her age, and her medical conditions. She hadn’t lost touch with the presence yet; she seemed to be unaware about the fact that she repeated her stories multiple times during the interview. Thus, we suspected that Mrs. Moore might be in the early stage of Alzheimer’s disease.…

    • 969 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Often times dementia is thought to be an interchangeable term for Alzheimer’s disease. However, dementia and Alzheimer’s disease (AD) are two similar yet different terminologies that should not be used in exchange for the other. Dementia is a broad term that is frequently used to describe people with underlying brain disorders who experience memory, communication and cognitive deficits. Neurodegenerative disease is usually the underlying factor that causes dementia. People who have dementia are affected differently depending on what part of the brain is affected or symptoms worsens over time.…

    • 2199 Words
    • 9 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Superior Essays

    Dementia is diagnosed by the presence of symptoms such as problems with memory, thinking, problem solving, language disturbances and psychological changes. Neurodegenerative changes within the brain, such as neuron death and a build-up of misplaced proteins are causal to the aforementioned symptoms. While an in depth understanding of the neurobiology of dementia has not been established, dementia diseases are characterized by the grade of neuron loss and the irreversible damage within the connections of the brain, combined with the resulting symptoms (Caberlotto and Nguyen, 2014). One of the most common forms of dementia, Alzheimer’s disease, occurs as a result of chemical and degenerative structural changes within the brain. Dementia can also be caused by a number of conditions such as vascular dementia following a stroke, fronto-temporal dementia caused by brain injury or Korsakoff’s syndrome, which is associated with long term excessive drinking.…

    • 1388 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Improved Essays

    You hear or see these words on a weekly, and sometimes on a daily basis: Dementia. However, sometimes we humans do not wrap our fingers around those words, not knowing what these words mean. Dementia is far more than simple words to assign a term for memory lost.…

    • 586 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Memory Loss Research Paper

    • 1002 Words
    • 5 Pages

    An early sign of the disease is a failure to remember recent life events and interactions. In its chronic stage, the person is unable to recall the way they used to perform simple life chores like personal care. Dementia, however, has other causes as well apart from Alzheimer. It is basically a term used to describe an entirety of memory loss conditions. Alzheimer is basically a major cause, accounting for around 65% of causes.…

    • 1002 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays