Codependency - Living Your Life Through Someone Else

Abstract

Dementia is a clinical syndrome characterised by deterioration in cognitive functions. Care giving is becoming more complex as increasing life expectancies tax the ability of family members to provide care. From a public health perspective, it is important to establish a well developed and coordinated system of community and institutional long term care, along with a reasonable payment method that combines public and private funding. Linking AD caregivers to available health care and community services can promote health and well-being in these families.

Executive Summary

Dementia is a progressive loss of cognitive function which can be due to a variety of physiological causes. The symptoms of Dementia include oblivion, orientation problems, difficulty in planning and thinking ahead, disorders of thought, difficulty in performing certain actions, and changes in the character traits. It also results in different behavioural problems such as difficulties with personal hygiene and care, depression, agitation, aggression and wandering. Because of the nature of behavioural problems, they are more burdensome to caregivers than are physical impairments. Different researches have been carried out for treatment of Dementia and numerous methods have been devised for the cure such as art therapy, drama therapy dance movement therapy. People with AD require high levels of care giving, and society benefits greatly from the willingness and ability of family caregivers to provide such care. Although family AD care giving may help to contain health care costs to society, it often results in serious costs to the primary caregivers. The challenge for public health systems is to design and implement evidence-based interventions to address needs of individual family caregivers at different points along the AD care giving trajectory.Codependency - Living Your Life Through Someone Else

Introduction

Dementia can be defined as a clinical syndrome characterised by deterioration in cognitive functions. One component of caring for an individual with dementia includes stimulating abilities, thereby improving the quality of life and decreasing problematic behaviours. Dementia is a progressive loss of cognitive function which can be due to a variety of physiological causes.

The two most common types of dementia are Ischemic Vascular Dementia (IVD) and Dementia of the Alzheimer's Type (DAT). IVD is a heterogeneous disorder, arising from different types of cerebral lesions in varying locations. The diagnostic criteria of IVD are the development of multiple cognitive deficits manifested by memory impairment, and aphasia (language disturbance), apraxia (impaired ability to carry out motor activities despite intact motor function), agnosia (failure to recognize or identify objects despite intact sensory function), and disturbance in executive functioning (i.e., planning, organizing, sequencing, abstracting). These cognitive deficits typically represent a significant decline from a previous level of functioning and cause significant impairment in social or professional ability.

The primary cognitive and functional, diagnostic criteria for DAT are essentially the same as those of IVD except that the course of OAT may be characterized by a gradual onset. Although there may be some behavioural differences in the early stages of IVD and OAT, as the diseases progress, the neurological damage ...