Dementia is a collection of symptoms including memory loss, personality change, and impaired intellectual functions resulting from disease or trauma to the brain. These changes are not part of normal aging and are severe enough to impact daily living, independence, and relationships. There will likely be noticeable decline in communication, learning, remembering, and problem solving. These changes may occur quickly or very slowly over time. Common signs and symptoms of dementia include: * Memory loss * Impaired judgment
Unit 4222-365 Understand the process and experience of dementia (DEM 301) Outcome 1 Understand the neurology of dementia 1.1 Describe a range of causes of dementia syndrome Dementia is caused by damage to the brain this can be caused many different ways such as, alcohol or drug abuse, brain injuries, depression, infection (HIV, UTI), vitamin deficiency, certain medications. different types of dementia have different causes for example Alzheimer’s is caused because the body can no longer break down proteins efficiently which affects the transmission of signals in the brain. 1.2 Describe the types of memory impairment commonly experienced by individuals with dementia Memory loss affects people with dementia in different ways but there are four common areas which people with dementia experience difficulties, Remembering events Most individuals who have dementia can remember the distant past more easily than whats happened in the past few months, weeks, days, hours and minutes. This is because memories decline in reverse order making newer information harder to recall. Taking in new information People with dementia find it very difficult to understand and retain new information and events.
Retrograde amnesia is defined as the loss of memory from the point of injury backwards. For example, a victim of an accident resulting in head injury may not be able to recall the accident, and even worse, they may not be able to remember what happened several days before the accident. Those who suffer from retrograde amnesia usually have trouble remembering events that happened closer to the time of the injury. In the most severe cases, some victims may even forget who they are. Generally, this type of amnesia is temporary, and gradually restoration of memory is very common.
Certain jobs may be difficult to pursue. Accommodations need to be required and limitations may need to be acknowledged. Such adaptations influence perception of a crisis in a way that’s different from an individual with normal hearing. Hearing loss may trigger an identity crisis, and reactive depression may occur. Older adults who are hard of hearing often report that their hearing loss causes communication problems, which can result in difficulty thinking or concentrating.
It also regulates fear and pleasure responses. Damage to the cerebellum can result in dizziness, vertigo, ataxia which is an inability to coordinate voluntary muscle movements, unsteady movements and staggering gait. This can interfere with a person's ability to walk, talk, eat, and to perform other self-care tasks. Other symptoms of a damaged cerebellum include poor motor control, the overestimation or underestimation of force, the inability to engage in rapidly alternating movements, loss of balance and loss of muscle memory. Damage to the cerebellum seems to affect procedural learning such as touch typing.
(Weinstein, B. E. (2003). Sensorineural hearing loss is the hearing loss experienced by older adults that result from atrophic changes within the sensory and neural systems. This is associated with a loss of ability to hear sound and speech clearly. In addition to this there are other factors that can aide in hearing loss associated with age, these include: exposure to loud noises, genetic factors, trauma, vascular disease, infections and ingestion of agents that have an ototoxic effect such as dieuritcs or chemotherapy drugs. Untreated hearing loss can have significant consequences.
This can be because data does not transfer successfully from short-term memory into permanent long-term memory. It is often a permanent condition generally thought to be caused by damage to the hippocampus section of the brain. This damage can be caused by an accident, surgery, alcohol, and even an acute deficiency of thiamine known as Korsakoff’s syndrome. Which is a chronic memory disorder caused by severe deficiency of thiamine better known as the vitamin B-1. Sometimes both these types of amnesia may occur together, sometimes called total or global amnesia.
People experiencing vascular dementia will, like those with Alzheimer’s disease, have problems with learning, remembering, recognition, planning and problem solving. However, there is a major difference in the two diseases. Alzheimer’s disease tends to affect the whole of the brain and to progress gradually and steadily. Vascular dementia tends to affect only certain areas of the brain, and this means someone may retain more of their abilities – and also more awareness of their condition. Dementia syndrome or ‘mixed dementia’are terms for a condition in which abnormalities characteristic of more than one type of dementia occur simultaneously in the brain.
So expressing themselves using body language may be difficult do to lack of cognitive control in their limbs, or hands. They may also show the same signs as Alzheimer’s disease. • Lewy bodies dementia is very similar to Alzheimer’s disease, the difference being that they may have hallucinations and become fearful. This will affect communication due to their behaviour may mean they are too scared to talk, or be spoken to. Physical and mental health factors need to be taken into account when communicating with someone with dementia, they may also be hard of hearing, or have limited eyesight.
The person’s patterns of thinking and behaviour differ from the expectations in society and they interfere with the persons normal functioning. Examples of this are paranoid personality disorder, obsessive compulsive personality disorder and antisocial personality disorder. Anxiety disorders – People with anxiety disorders respond to certain objects or situations with fear and dread. This can be mild or severe. The person may suffer with responses that are un appropriate in certain situations as well as the usual signs (rapid heartbeat, sweating and nervousness.