How to Know If An Elder Is Suffering From Dementia

Elder suffering from Dementia

Dementia involves an extensive range of symptoms that are related with thinking skills or memory decline which reduce an individual’s ability to conduct daily activities.

If your senior loved one has been experiencing memory problems don’t jump to the conclusion that it’s dementia. An individual is require to have least two kinds of impairments to receive a dementia diagnosis. Along with difficulties in remembering, a patient may also undergo impairments in language, focus, reasoning and communication. Here are some common symptoms of dementia:

Short Term Memory Changes

Symptoms of changes in short term memory loss include forgetting where they left something, what they were supposed to do on a given day, and having trouble remembering why they entered a room. These changes can e subtle and tend to involve short term memory loss.

Apathy

An individual with dementia symptoms can lose interest in activities or hobbies and they may not feel like going out or having fun. They might even lose the desire to spend time with friends and family and may seem emotionally flat.

Confusion

When thinking, judgment or memory lapses, confusion would ultimately rise since the patient would no longer find the right words to use, remember faces or seem to interact with people in a good way. Confusion may occur in various situations like when they have difficulty remembering someone they have met a few weeks back or forget what is happening the next day.

Mood Changes

If you or your loved one has dementia, it is not always easy to identify in yourself, however you may notice this change in someone else very easily. In addition to changes in mood, you may also experience a personality shift.

Difficulty in Completing Normal Tasks

When a person starts finding trouble doing more complex tasks like playing games that have a lot of rules or balancing a checkbook then it possibly indicates that someone has dementia. Along with the struggle to finish familiar tasks, they may find issues in following new regimen.

Difficulty Finding the Right Words

An individual may have problems finding the right words to explain something or to express themselves. Having a conversation with the dementia patient can be a bit cumbersome or it may take longer than usual to conclude it.

Trouble Following Storylines

People with dementia disease often forget the meaning of words they are used to hearing or struggle to follow conversations or TV programs. This is a classic early symptom of dementia.

Being Repetitive

Because of general behavioral changes or memory loss, repetition is pretty common in dementia. The individual may repeat daily tasks such as: collecting items obsessively, shaving or they may also repeat the questions after they have been satisfactorily answered.

A failing sense of direction

With the onset of dementia, the sense of directions starts to diminish which means a person fails to recognize familiar landmarks. It also becomes more difficult to follow step-by-step instructions and a series of directions.

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