Impacts of Dementia on Daily Living

Dementia is overall term that is used to describe various wide ranges of diseases and/or conditions that are often diagnosed by the loved one or caregivers of a patient suffering from signs and symptoms of a decline in memory, language, and problem-solving skills. This condition affects the patient’s thoughts, responses, feelings and all aspects of life. Individuals diagnosed with dementia often go through a range of emotional changes including depression, loneliness, anxiety, and stigma. Dementia is important because of its impacts of hindering daily activities by its psychological effects. The disease progresses with age and can make the simplest daily tasks become difficult or impossible to achieve. Older patients with dementia may have little or no control over their thoughts and feelings while preforming their daily activities; as the diseases symptoms causes them to isolate themselves, which challenges for interaction skills with others and shrinks their social network as they struggle and interoperate that society views them as difficult or a burden. Commonly, Dementia patients may misinterpret a person’s message or judge a person’s opinion as influenced by their health condition. So, the question surfaces, how does Dementia impact daily living? Dementia impacts daily living as it impedes the brains ability to sequence, plan and organize multiple-step activities, influencing individuals psychological changes; reflecting memory loss, created illusions, and nervous behavior. The purpose of this paper is to discuss the affects dementia has on a person’s daily life. Specifically, I will be informing readers on how dementia impacts daily living from causes of forgetfulness, paranoia and anxiety.

With aging, individuals diagnosed with Dementia are more than likely characterised by a psychological effect of acute to chronic forgetfulness. Forgetfulness impacts daily living as it hinders the individual’s ability to remember how things function. Common symptoms include forgetting how to use household appliances, getting lost in familiar places, repeatedly missing routine appointments that occur at the same time and place, and even impacting observant physical changes in personal hygiene or appearance. One may forget to shower or putting clothes on correctly. The power of memory loss, whether short or long term, impacts daily living as it makes even the simplest daily routines difficult, or impossible tasks to achieve. Unfortunately, this causing Dementia patients to feel frustrated, defeated, incompetent and induces them to become solely dependent on those around them.

When an elderly is diagnosed with Dementia, society tends to believe that it only deteriorates their forgetfulness; some may even take advantage; promoting actions such as, stealing or do thing that the patient has not approved (Kales, et al., 2015). It is unfortunate that the prime suspects: family members, friends, and/or caregivers are the most commonly known to take advantage of elderly dementia patients. When an elderly patient living with dementia is taken advantage of by their family members, friends or caretakers, they may feel stigmatized and start avoiding contact or losing trust in those individuals. Some patients may become rude and defensive when interacting with others to try proving that they are mentally stable and that they can remember things when in reality they cannot. This impacts daily living as Dementia patient’s deteriorating memory increase their fear of stigma; causing them to struggle as they attempt to complete tasks alone without asking for help, just to prove to others that they have a stable mental condition and can function without assistance. These circumstances could cause both unintentional mental and physical harm to the patient and/or physical harm to other. As forgetfulness is a commonly linked sign and symptom of Dementia, patients with this condition may begin to show signs of paranoia as their aging psychological mindset struggles to separate fiction from reality and the fear of stigma from societies view of elderly stereotypes.

Dementia patients age and their condition worsens; their natural instinct and thought process changes too. The physiological changes of delusions, hallucinations, and abnormal thoughts fuel their growth of fear that people are forming conspiracies against them. The may began to accuse others of theft, infidelity, or other inappropriate behaviour. Due to these unfortunate circumstances, elderly Dementia patients’ psychological changes alters and misguides their perception of how others view them; and their actions are characterized as signs and symptoms of paranoia. Paranoia impacts daily living as it causes patients to become easily agitated. This causes patients to give up quickly as they begin to feel that their simple daily activities like grooming, feeding and/or walking independently may seem difficult to achieve. There is a great possibility that while patients with dementia experience paranoia, their delusion and hallucinations may appear to become their new reality, and their actions and productivity reflects from them. This could put dementia patients and others in harm’s way; as everyone’s natural instinct is to protect themselves from things they fear. Recent studies have shown that most common paranoia symptoms occur due to the types of treatment given from caregivers like friends, family, peers of individuals living with Dementia.

Similar to stereotypes based on race and gender; aging is a dimension through which people categorize and treat others either intentional or unintentionally by those commemorated thoughts and by using aging cues. Age cues are perceived depending on not only someone’s appearance but by their psychological decline or stability. Due to their growth of wit, psychological stability and progressive learning; the youth has the ability to establish different inferences regarding advanced age, targeting older people’s intentions, wishes, goals and decision-making capabilities. Because of this, older individuals are therefore stigmatized by the society due to their declining abilities to make the right decisions and perceive difficult situations. Older people living with Dementia lives become impacted by the way society around them and strongly impacted by the way friends, family, and/or peers unfairly treat them. These circumstances increase Dementia patient’s likelihood of experiencing paranoia, and puts them in greater danger of suffering psychologically from the effects of stigma. Care giving from friends, family and peers in the ways of neglect, continuously leaving them lonely, can easily be miscommunicated to a dementia patient as being a burden/bother to others. Due to their loss of control over their psychological changes; Dementia patients begin to present signs of paranoia as they begin to believe that others are either conjuring against them, talking about them and/or judging them by their decisions based on their health condition. This often causes older patients living with dementia to distant themselves from public functions and become paranoid of those around them.

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Various studies have proved that older patients living with dementia undergo discrimination in the hands of physicians, caretakers and nurses. Since the nurse and caretakers understand the dynamics of old age and the effects of mental conditions on this population, they can start treating the poorly and viewing them as difficult to handle. The effects of negative treatment of old patients by nurses are prevalent in nursing homes and in the diagnosis of medical problems by doctors. Symptoms such as depression can get misdiagnosed as dementia or unnoticed by practitioners. Some nurses and other medical practitioners may also start mistreating dementia patients with pain due to their common beliefs regarding the normal course of ageing. The negative misconceptions and beliefs by medical workers can affect the level and quality of treatment and care dementia patients receive.

Negative attitudes and stereotypes about the ageing population can cause patronizing behaviour especially in terms of verbal interactions. Elder speak, or secondary baby talk is one of the most patronizing behaviours that affect elderly dementia patients and make them feel stigmatized. Secondary baby talk involves the use of simplified speech characterized by exaggerated intonations; simplified grammar limited vocabulary and the use of small sentences as a way of ensuring the listeners understands the speaker as a child. This issue is prevalent in various natural settings including residential care facilities for elderly patients living with mental conditions especially during interactions between young nurses and care givers of the elderly. The patronizing tendencies can make the illusion that elderly patients are no longer relevant or serve as a purpose of importance; which can be perceived as their capabilities, choices and opinions are not worthy of serious consideration. Recent studies have shown that some speakers use elderly speech with regard to the mental functionalities of elderly patients living with mental conditions. This can cause patients to feel stigmatized and looked down upon; especially by the younger generation of nurses and/or techs within a medical facility. The stigma Dementia patient experience in assisted living facilities impacts daily living as patients’ psychological changes requires them to become dependent on others to make decision on their behalf; stripping dementia patients of their competence. With fear from stigma in medical facilities; it is common that Dementia patient’s experience high levels of anxiety.

According to McKenzie (2017), anxiety is also a common symptom in older patients living with different aetiologies of dementia including vascular dementia and Lewy body disease. Anxiety is characterized by psychological changes associated with anxious and nervousness; and is commonly expressed by individuals living with Dementia. Anxiety impacts daily living as it put dementia patients at high risk of restlessness, irritability, excessive worrying and tension, PTSD, and causes them to experiences common side effects such as unrealistic view of problems. Anxiety can cause individuals to isolate themselves from others and/or makes it difficult for Dementia patients to complete daily activities due to constant jitters and inability to concentrate/focus.

Studies indicate that various aspects of functions that are related to attention can be affected and modified by anxiety. In older patients living with dementia, the attention narrowing, attention control and selective attention can be affected by anxiety. Due to lack of control over emotions and frequent fears that something might happen, elderly patients living with dementia may become restless and find the need to start moving from one place to another or get upset when focusing on a particular situation. This creates hazards for dementia patients as they are more likely to roam off and get lost in familiar places.

Overall, Dementia impacts daily living as it alters a person’s Psychological health. This impact effect ones short and/or long-term memory; causing paranoia multiple reasons, such as deteriorating mental health and stigma, and increases their anxiety. This disease decreases individual’s independence to function and doing things on their own as their psychological changes prohibits them to do so. Declines in short or long memory, such as forgetfulness, hinders the individual’s ability to remember the basics of common routines; making it difficult for them to function independently. Experiencing forgetfulness makes individuals unaware of their familiar surroundings and increases their chances of experiencing paranoia. Paranoia causes physiological changes of delusions, hallucinations, and abnormal thoughts fuel their growth of fear that people are forming conspiracies against them. It impacts their daily living as they are more likely to become irritable and loses trust in other. This can result in dementia patients increase of urge to do everything on their own while lacking competence in proper decision making; pulling their lives, as well as others in danger. Paranoia also increase the likelihood of patients experiencing chronic anxiety. Anxiety impacts live as it puts dementia patients at high risk of restlessness, irritability, excessive worrying and tension, high blood pressure and can cause other serious health conditions that have been proven to be fatal to the elderly generation.

Society should grid of stereotypes and all negative thought or accusations that are associated as ageist aging cues, become more educated on the multiple types of Dementia, and think twice about the way to think or act towards a patient who experience unexpected or controllable psychological changes. It is important as a collective society to treat others as you’d want to be treated; because we all will age and no one knows what their future mental health state will be. People should become more involved and take better care of the elder generation, as they have help to create a path for you. Continue to challenge their psychological stability so that dementia does not take complete control of their daily living. Recent studies have shown that to reduce chances or to prolong dementia, one can ; Create meal prep plans in order to maintain healthy lifestyle; Read, write, and work on cross word puzzles; Learn something new, such as taking adult education courses or learning a different language; Continue daily routines; Create mnemonics/reminders, and motive them to maintain a social life in a friendly environment. Do not be afraid to get involved. Be the change the world needs. Help stop dementia from impacting daily living!