Dementia: Caring for patients suffering ‘old people’s disease’

Old age is associated with unwanted things such as body pains, inability to sleep and low vision. Some old people also tend to lose their memory so much that they cannot even recognise the people around them. People with these symptoms are sometimes made fun of.  For instance, it is common to see old people […]

Old age is associated with unwanted things such as body pains, inability to sleep and low vision. Some old people also tend to lose their memory so much that they cannot even recognise the people around them. People with these symptoms are sometimes made fun of.  For instance, it is common to see old people running away from their urine, saying it is a snake that is chasing them.

 The conclusion commonly reached in this part of the globe is that the old man is just going through the normal aging process but not a disease that requires going to the hospital. 

However, this condition is not a normal process but rather symptoms of a medical condition called dementia.

In the past, the disease was not diagnosed in Nigeria due to lack of personnel and facilities, said a psychiatrist, Dr Usman Muhammad Minjibir of the Abdullahi Wase Specialist Hospital, Kano.  

He said there are now personnel and hospitals  thereby making it easy to diagnose dementia in people.  

 Dementia, according to Dr Minjibir, generally refers to an impairment of the memory; a decline in mental ability severe enough to interfere with one’s daily life. People with this problem find it difficult to remember things around them; some would forget even about food and would behave without care about their manner. The commonest type of dementia is the Alzheimer’s disease.  

He said the symptoms of dementia include loss of memory, communication and language problem, inability to focus and pay attention, reasoning and judgment as well as visual perception problems. 

It affects people from the age 60 to 65 but in the case of hereditary dementia, it could appear even before the age of 60.

He said the causes of dementia are many. 

“Dementia could be as a result of some infections – HIV, radiation, toxins, excessive intake of alcohol and vascular problems such as after a stroke or as a result of high blood pressure or diabetes,” he said.

Dr Minjibir said when a person becomes old; the size of his brain shrinks and becomes lighter, thereby making its functions to also reduce. Different types of dementia are associated with particular type of brain cell damage in a particular region of the brain.

 According to him, people with dementia have problem with differentiating space.

 “At the early stage, they might be showing some abnormal behaviours like removing their clothes where they are not supposed to. They also have problems identifying objects but could describe the function of the objects, and if they want to enter for example a kitchen, they could enter the toilet. 

 “Also, if they go out of the house, they find it difficult to come back because they have problem with identifying space. They suffer short term memory loss; can remember an event that happened 40 years ago but have problem remembering what happened a short while ago,” he explained.

 There is no cure for dementia but there are some drugs that could improve the condition, the psychiatrist said.

 He said if dementia was due to some disorder such as high blood pressure or diabetes, the underlying disorder could be managed. He advised people to engage in both physical and mental activities early in life as a preventive measure.

 People with dementia present abnormal behaviours and only a patient’s care giver can give them the maximum attention. 

 Dr Minjibir said such patients have already lost contact with reality, and show many abnormal behaviours, such as saying that they were being hated by people or that people were stealing their properties and many other accusative statements. Other behaviours with people suffering from dementia include hallucination or seeing things that are not there.

 The psychiatrist urged care givers to be patient in caring for sufferers as the condition is irreversible. He said the care givers should not be bothered by the patient’s accusations, and should continue to assist and try to make the patients happy.

 In some cases, such patients could even forget about food, thus there should be someone close by to feed them when due and to ensure their body and where they stay is clean, he said. 

 He also advised that if one sees a close relative behaving in an abnormal way, he or she should be taken to the hospital immediately to ascertain what is wrong.