Dementia - an overview
Topic: Dementia - an overview
Venue: Senior Citizen's Forum, Patny
Date: 7th September 2015
Time: 4pm
Facilitator: Amulya Rajan, ARDSI-Hyd Deccan - Psychologist
The session commenced at 4pm and was attended by close to 25 senior citizens. Literature on Dementia in English and Urdu was distributed to the audience.
The session commenced with Ms Amulya Rajan giving a brief overview of ARDSI- Hyd Deccan chapter and the various activities that they were involved in. She then introduced the audience to the topic of Dementia and what the term means. She then went on to explain to the audience the different complaints that dementia patients and their caregivers usually come to neurologists with.
Further she spoke of the procedure of assessing and diagnosing a patient with dementia- first starting with cognitive assessments, then going on to do more tests and scans and then finally with the neurologist making a diagnosis. Ms. Amulya then gave the audience a brief overview of the different kinds of dementia that exist and the symptoms that define each kind and about the percentage of elderly and patients of dementia currently present in Andhra Pradesh.
Further Ms. Amulya went on to speak about the Supportive care necessary for dementia patients. She stressed on how they had to be encouraged to do several mental, social and physical activities and had to be treated with care and regard through the progress of the disease.She then went on to talk about the various ways in which one can prevent dementia stressing on a lifestyle that constituted physical fitness, health diet and various activities that stimulate and protect metal and emotional health. She then opened up the session for questions.
