Senile dementia is a psychopathological syndrome caused by a brain disease, usually of a chronic and progressive nature
According to psychiatrists-gerontologists, dementia is a global mental disorder in a person with a clear consciousness. This pathology disturbs mental functions such as memory, thinking, orientation, understanding, counting, learning ability, language and assessment (ICD-10).
The fear of memory loss and rational contact with reality, the prospect of being dulled and closed in the world of affliction and predictions, let me testify to the obsessive, repeated sleep of one of my patients.
Alarmed, I was crossing a long street. At times, I had the impression that it is a famous promenade in Sopot. However, I was not sure. I did not know where I was going and what I was looking for. And yet clearly I wanted to go somewhere. At some point I realized that I was lost in a foreign city and lost my memory as a result of an accident. It started to rain. Somewhere I left my umbrella and now I'm getting wet. I felt that all my clothes soaked me with water. I need to take refuge somewhere soon, because otherwise I will catch a cold sooner, and leaving my illness always lasts for a very long time. Everywhere, however, some bad people surround me. I am afraid to ask them for help. At the end of the street is a wooden stall. I think I used to sell Italian ice cream here. Inside, I come across a family that looks like Arabs or Gypsies. I'm talking to an old woman who has a small facial hair. At this moment, I realize that I do not have a wallet - I lost it somewhere. I still have a memorial watch on my wrist. I can lose him here. I put my hand deep into my pocket so that no one would notice it. I am asking for help, for calling an ambulance, because "something happened to me". At this moment, I remind myself that if I admit to losing my memory, I will end up in the hell of a psychiatric hospital. There, I will definitely plunder them and I will get some horrible drugs. I decide to pretend to be heart sick. I rub my arm around my chest, I'm talking about great pain in this area. Maybe I'm going to cardiology? I will moan and say nothing about losing my memory. I hear the signal of an approaching ambulance. I am afraid of the result of my mystification. I wake up.
Dementia is by far the most common mental illness of old age.
The frequency of its occurrence increases very clearly with the age of old patients. According to UK and US statistics, approximately 10% of the population over 65 suffers from dementia. Similarly, the statistics of other European countries show that while the dementia is less than 1% in people under 65 years of age, after the age of 85, up to 50%. On the basis of the analysis of many epidemiological studies, it was found that the prevalence of dementia doubles every 5 years up to 94 years of age.
A disabling psycho-social context of the disease
Undoubtedly, dementia is a tragic disease that deceitfully turns into the personality of the individual, its intellectual potential, breaks delicate interpersonal bonds. The closest thing seems to be that a family member has long left them, leaving only the pathetic remains of his original personality. The whole medical world, focused on the fastest possible treatment combined with predictable therapeutic success, avoided and avoided this kind of patients.Hospitals defend against them, even homes of care are reluctant, and often their lives are maintained by their love and care of the family, whose important elements were once stupefied patients now.
Hope in the progress of medicine
A lack of interest in patients with dementia and therapeutic nihilism, which prevailed in the first half of the twentieth century, changed fundamentally when in the sixties it was discovered that the cause of Alzheimer's disease is a defect of synaptic transmission and there was a chance to reverse this phenomenon, that is to be active (be maybe in the near future) treatment of this disease and other types of dementia. This hope is reinforced by more and more recent reports from research laboratories and the introduction of new drugs that have this serious disease to stay.
Doctor of Medicine Janusz KrzyżowskiPsychiatrist
Private office tel. 22 833 18 68
00-774Warszawa, Dolna 4 lok. 15
