What is dementia?

Myth: ‘Dementia means you will become incapable of living life with any meaning’.

This learning begins by outlining some of the medical aspects of dementia in order to describe the effects and changes that take place. The challenge is to gain understanding that these changes do not prevent a person from continuing to live life to the full as we all hope to do, having both good, and not so good days, in our moment to moment experience of life.

‘Dementia’ is a term used to describe a group of symptoms.

The main symptoms are:

Myth: Dementia is when a person just loses their memory

One of the important things to recognise about dementia is that it is more than just difficulties with memory.

The diagram above shows how a person with dementia can have difficulties in a number of areas and all these affect each other, causing confusion and difficulty with everyday living.

Dementia can be described as a person having a range of disabilities which can be more difficult to recognise than physical disabilities.

Because of these disabilities a person’s ability to function in their usual way is affected as well as the ability to make decisions and judgements.