Psychosocial Processes and Interaction Skills

Psychosocial Processes and Interaction Skills

Introduction

Cognitive impairing at the global level includes dementia which is a clinical syndrome. Level of functioning has found to be reduced in this conditioning and other disturbances include psychiatric and behavioral disability and impairment in functional abilities.

Dementia is known as a syndrome because it is a disease of brain and it is progressive in nature. Many functions of the brain are disturbed in this condition which includes comprehension, memory, orientation, learning capability, judgment, language, calculation, and thinking. All these impairments proceed to decline in social behavior, emotional control and motivation. This syndrome occurs in all those conditions in which brain is being affected.

There are two types of dementia which are young onset dementia and late onset dementia. Young onset dementia is also called as pre-senile dementia and it occurs to the people who are less than 65 years of age. Late onset dementia is also called as senile dementia and it occurs after the age of 65. There are different clinical utilities for the people who are suffering from two different types of dementia because these people have different characteristics and etiology (Harvey et al., 2003).

Biological processes

The condition of dementia has loss of memory and a person is not able to learn new things which reflect that anatomical sites of the brain are disturbed. Different cortical functions of the brain are disturbed in the later illness. For instances, the executive function, praxis and language are affected. There are many symptoms of the disease which include agitation, depression, apathy, psychosis (delusions and hallucinations), disinhibition, wandering, incontinence and altered eating habits. All these symptoms discussed above cause conditions of stress to carers and individuals and they are difficult to manage. All these symptoms are able to strongly predict the cognitive impairment (Donaldson et al., 1997), and they represent the need of a person to enter for the institutional care (Bianchetti et al., 1999). The initial symptoms of dementia can be disturbance in language, behavior and praxis.

Psychosocial processes

People who are suffering from dementia are at higher risks to develop different physical health problems and delirium is the condition which can be developed due to medication and physical illness. Many reasons are found for this connection and different types of dementia like VaD and DLB arise in those people who are suffering from severe illnesses like Parkinson's disease and Stroke. The progression of dementia in the course of AD is connected with the changes that occur in appetite, autonomic function, neurological signs, eating habits and autonomic functions. Decreased personal care, reduction in mobility and lack of medical treatment increases the chances of dementia.

The common problems of dementia include nutritional problems and weight loss. In addition, the severity of illness is also increased. The Alzheimer's Society has developed the guidelines for the care providers and healthcare staff so that they can be able to deal with the problems of eating, drinking and food of patients of ...