Dementia disease

Dementia, Publich Health And Public Policy, Making The Connection

Ø  Introduction

Public health and dementia have, until recently, rarely been found sharing the same bed either in academic journal or in policy discourse. This party reflects the low profile that dementia has had policy debates but even ehen it has failen under the spotlight, the focus has been on it as a neuorological condition and the priority has been to find effective treatments or cure.

In the last 10 years, howevere, the landscape has canged significantly and he profile of dementia has risen dramaticaly in policy, research and practice terms. Although the liink with public health is still relatively week a significant development took place in 2014 which perhaps signal a change on that front.

Ø  Dementia

Dementia is an umbrella ter  for a variety of organic condition in that affect the brain. Commoon symptoms are loss of memory, cognitive impairments, deterioration in motor skills and executive function, confusion, and delucions. It is a progressive and terminal condition and there is curently no cure or universally effective treatment. An estimated 800,000 people in the UK are believed to have some form of dementia, the most common of which is Alzheimer’s disease, affecting arround 62% of people with dementia. Dementia is overwhelmingly an illness of later life and the risk of developing dementia increase as one gets older;none in 25 people aged between 70 until  79 have dementia but this rises to one in six people aged over 80. Two-thirds of peopple with dementia live in their own homes in the community. With an ageing population in the UK it is estimated that by2021 there will be over a million people with dementia. The cost of dementia to the UK economy is currently estimated to be $23 billion (Alzheimer’s Society, 2013).

Ø  Public policy and dementia

10 years ago dementia hardly featured in the public  policy  landscape. It was not mentioned in the Department of Health’s (1999) National Serviice Framework (NSF) for mental health which only went up to the age of 65. In the 2001 NSF for older people it was onlya sub-section in the chapter on the mental health of older people (Department of Health, 2001). This changed dramatically in the second half of the decade with several national reports about dementia  and in2009, the publication by the Department of Health (2009) of a national dementia strategy for England scotland, Wales and Northem Ireland have all followed suit.