Tag Archives: dementia

Features Australia/NZ, Features Australia/NZ, Features Australia/NZ, Seniors' Health

Dementia is Not Just About Memory Loss

Centre for Healthy Brain Ageing (CHeBA)

Social cognitive health – Credit: Envato Elements

We focus too much on memory loss in relation to dementia and not enough on difficulties with identifying emotions in social situations, according to researchers from UNSW Sydney’s Centre for Healthy Brain Ageing (CHeBA) and the MARCS Institute for Brain, Behaviour and Development at Western Sydney University.

The perspective paper, published in Frontiers of Psychiatry, has highlighted the importance of assessing standard emotional responses to situations in order to improve diagnosis and management of dementia.

Lead author and social health expert Dr Suraj Samtani said that individuals with many types of dementia can identify most emotions such as happiness, sadness, surprise and fear, but have difficulties identifying other basic or primary emotions, including disgust or anger in facial expressions, as well as sarcasm and jokes in conversations.

“The value of assessing social cognition in older adults with dementia is to improve early intervention and treatment,” said Dr Samtani.

“It can also help identify dementia pathways for individuals from type of dementia such as frontotemporal dementia, to development of behavioural symptoms. Early signs of Alzheimer’s disease – the most common form of dementia – involve memory loss, but for other types of dementia such as frontotemporal dementia, difficulties with social cognition are often the earliest signs of change.

Humans are inherently social beings, and having social connection is considered a basic human need. As individuals age, a variety of physical, cognitive and social changes take place, which can influence daily functioning and subsequently overall wellbeing.

Dr Samtani explained that in this context social cognition is “our ability to recognise emotions, social cues, inhibit inappropriate behaviour and act appropriately in social situations.”

Social cognition is a key component of how we function as social beings and includes the ability to understand other people’s mental states, and being able to feel and respond to what other people feel.

“Deficits in any of these social cognitive functions are a core feature of mild cognitive impairment and dementia, and may represent an early decline in cognitive function,” said Dr Samtani.

“These can manifest through behaviours such as difficulties with eye contact, behaving rudely or offensively and a clear failure to detect social cues in conversations.”

Routine social cognition assessments would ensure timely and appropriate interventions to improve social functioning and strengthen social health for individuals with dementia.

Another important factor noted in the paper is the link between social cognitive skills and the maintenance of social relationships.

Dr Joyce Siette from the MARCS Institute and senior author on the paper explained that individuals experiencing difficulty responding to social cues or having trouble reading emotions will likely become isolated and lonely.

“With recent evidence indicating that social isolation is a known modifiable risk factor for dementia, it is time to consider how we can reliably detect social cognitive deficits, as well as identify changes in them over time,” said Dr Siette.

However, identifying these deficits has many challenges, notably that there is no standard or accepted approach to measuring them.

While social reasoning and identifying and remembering faces add great value to the assessment of social cognition, the lack of measuring skills such as eye contact, asking open ended questions, using humour, understanding puns and keeping conversations going marks a flaw in the dementia diagnosis process.

“The majority of social cognition measures have either not been rigorously developed or psychometrically validated with people experiencing cognitive changes, with social behaviour the key component that remains to be assessed properly,” said Dr Samtani.

Internationally acclaimed leaders in the ageing brain and Co-Directors of CHeBA, Professor Henry Brodaty and Professor Perminder Sachdev, said that “more work was needed to develop an effective measurement of social cognition that have functionality in the clinic.”

Text and Photo provided by: University of New South Wales (UNSW).

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Record Funding for Dementia, Ageing and Aged Care Research

“It is crucial our best and brightest minds are helping advance the tools the aged care industry can use to provide better environments and resources for older Australians.” The Hon. Anika Wells MP, Minister for Aged Care, Minister for Sport

The Albanese Government will provide an unprecedented $25 million for dementia, ageing and aged care research.
A total of 18 grants, provided through the Medical Research Future Fund, will go to Australia’s best and brightest researchers.

Their research will look at new ways to extend older Australians’ healthy, active, years of life.

New approaches will reduce the stigma associated with ageing and lead to better outcomes for older people, including those in vulnerable populations.

Consistency and quality of care for older Australians will be improved across all care settings.

Better data will be used to develop more effective, evidence-based, care for older Australians.

The projects will view a range of ways to improve support for older Australians.

These include developing an app for older people to recognise early signs of dementia; and increasing dementia diagnosis and early treatments through primary care and awareness programs.

Researchers will look at reducing the risk of dementia, cardiovascular disease and falls through healthy lifestyle and diet changes, including a specific exercise and falls prevention program for older culturally and linguistically diverse Australians.

People’s fitness to drive when they have been diagnosed with dementia will be better assessed and managed.

Older people will be encouraged to communicate their aged care needs, provide their views on screening for age-related health conditions, and engage in physical activity for better health.

Health providers will be helped to better recognise and respond to elder abuse.

Researchers will also trial the use of metformin medication to treat blocked leg arteries; and use informatics to improve medication management in nursing homes.

Here’s the full list of projects and intended outcomes:

Project title: A Preventative Care Program to optimise mental health during transition into residential aged care
Project summary: The transition from living in the community to residential aged care (a nursing home), is a stressful experience for the person and their family that can lead to poor mental health. We designed a program to assist the new resident (PEARL), the family (aSTART), and to provide additional training for staff. We expect the combination of programs will reduce and prevent symptoms of depression in the resident. We will evaluate the impact of the program to guide national rollout.
Recipient: University of Newcastle
Funding amount: $200,000.00
Project title: Better Environment, Healthier Ageing
Project summary: “Better environment, Healthier Ageing” project aims to measure major environmental risk factors comprehensively, to evaluate their health impacts in older Australians, and to develop, evaluate and implement intervention strategies that can mitigate the adverse impacts. The project will clarify the environmental enablers and barriers for achieving healthy ageing, and provide older Australians, aged care and health service providers with effective strategies to improve environmental health.
Recipient: Monash University
Funding amount: $200,000.00
Project title:A Preventative Care Program to optimise mental health during transition into residential aged care
Project summary: The transition from living in the community to residential aged care (a nursing home), is a stressful experience for the person and their family that can lead to poor mental health. We designed a program to assist the new resident (PEARL), the family (aSTART), and to provide additional training for staff. We expect the combination of programs will reduce and prevent symptoms of depression in the resident. We will evaluate the impact of the program to guide national rollout.
Recipient: University of Newcastle
Funding amount: $200,000.00
Project title: EMBED: A stepped wedge cluster randomised trial of a tailored, integrated model of care to reduce symptoms of depression in home aged care
Project summary: Older people who receive aged care services at home are at a high risk of depression but lack access to effective treatments. Aged care staff are mostly not trained to recognise or manage symptoms of depression. This research will evaluate Enhanced Management of home-Based Elders with Depression (EMBED)—a new model of care that is expected to reduce symptoms of depression, address stigma and enable older Australians to access evidence-based, tailored treatment at home.
Recipient: Monash University
Funding amount: $1,997,775.71
Project title: Evaluation of primary care and help-seeking promotion programs to increase dementia diagnosis and early treatment
Project summary: This project will test whether a public health-seeking campaign and a primary care practice change program increase dementia diagnosis and treatments and supports after diagnosis. The interventions will target dementia knowledge, stigma, and motivations. Interventions will be delivered in three regions. We will measure change through routinely collected health administration data, surveys and interviews. Results will be used to improve dementia training, public campaigns and policy.
Recipient: University of Sydney
Funding amount: $1,999,814.75
Project title: Frailty KIT: An Australian Frailty Network to Create Knowledge, Implement Findings and Support Training
Project summary: Programs to promote healthy ageing and reduce frailty work in research trials, but these are not widely available and where they are, people do not always join in. This study will compare ways to support older people to participate in frailty programs (e.g. health coach, online portal) to inform national implementation. We will form an Australian Frailty Network to oversee this and ensure all future work is coordinated and informed by the needs of older people, their families and caregivers.
Recipient: The University of Queensland
Funding amount: $4,993,238.54
Project title: Getting to the heart of healthy ageing: a behaviour change program to promote dietary pattern changes
Project summary: Blood vessel disease is linked with risk of dementia, cardiovascular disease and falls. A large clinical trial will determine if a novel, low-cost, behaviour change program (knowledge of level of blood vessel disease, its links with risk of dementia, cardiovascular disease and falls, and the benefits of and how to follow a Mediterranean diet) will motivate an individual to make healthy lifestyle changes and will improve measures of risk for dementia, cardiovascular disease and falls.
Recipient: Edith Cowan University
Funding amount: $506,834.96
Project title: IMPAACT: IMproving the PArticipation of older Australians in policy decision-making on Ageing-related CondiTions
Project summary: In the future, more Australians will live with health conditions that are related to getting older.  Some experts recommend that older people be screened for these conditions, yet many questions remain about how best to do this. Together with older people, we will conduct a process to incorporate older people’s views into screening for ageing-related conditions. Our project will provide recommendations on how such screening should be offered within the community.
Recipient: Torrens University Australia Limited
Funding amount: $584,430.14
Project title: Implementation of a co-designed exercise and fall prevention program for older people from CALD backgrounds.
Project summary: There is strong evidence that exercise reduces falls in older people. Most older people do not meet physical activity guidelines and there are limited resources to support people from culturally and linguistically diverse (CALD) backgrounds. We will i) codesign an exercise and falls prevention program with older people from three culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds and stakeholders and ii) evaluate the program in 630 older people from CALD backgrounds.
Recipient: University of Melbourne
Funding amount: $200,000.00
Project title: Implementing innovative technology promoting self-awareness of brain health and self-determination in obtaining a timely dementia diagnosis
Project summary: To delay decline, dementia needs to be diagnosed early. However, up to 76% of Australians diagnosed with dementia have advanced beyond the early stage. The Brain Health Journey app is designed to increase awareness of brain health and promote help-seeking for cognitive concerns. This research into the app use and influence on help-seeking, knowledge and beliefs about dementia will underpin widespread use of an evidence-based app by vulnerable older people to facilitate timely dementia diagnosis.
Recipient: Deakin University
Funding amount: $1,052,176.56
Project title: MEtformin for treating peripheral artery disease Related walking Impairment Trial (MERIT)
Project summary: MERIT is a randomised controlled trial to assess whether a cheap repurposed medication can treat blocked leg arteries (peripheral artery disease), a condition which adversely affects the quality of life and reduces the functional ability of over 1 million older Australians. Given the substantial prevalence of this disease in older people and the current absence of effective treatments, the findings of MERIT will have important implications for older people worldwide.
Recipient: James Cook University
Funding amount: $1,215,182.04
Project title: Navigating Fitness to Drive with Patients with Dementia in Primary Care: Delivering an innovative Online Driver Safety Assessment and Management Package to Practitioners
Project summary: We will deliver critical resources for primary care management of driving in patients with dementia. These resources include a validated off-road assessment of fitness to drive and protocols. These resources will empower GPs to begin a driving conversation early, assess confidently, and encourage their patients to plan early for eventual driving cessation. An approach that GPs and people living with dementia endorse as the optimal outcome in the inevitable transition to driving retirement.
Recipient: The University of Queensland
Funding amount: $1,316,765.43
Project title: No more shame: Changing health providers recognition and response to elder abuse to reduce associated stigma
Project summary: Elder abuse is stigmatised. Older people feel shame disclosing it; health providers struggle to detect it. By improving health providers’ recognition and response, the stigma of elder abuse can be reduced. Using co-design and trial methods, we evaluate our intervention’s effectiveness in improving: (i) health providers’ knowledge of elder abuse and ageist attitudes; (ii) sub-acute care sites’ detection and responses; and (iii) older people’s sense of safety, quality of life, and mental health.
Recipient: University of Melbourne
Funding amount: $1,561,144.75
Project title: Residential Aged Care – Enhanced Dementia Diagnosis
Project summary: The Royal Commission into Aged Care Quality and Safety found that 1 in 5 people have undiagnosed dementia. Our program provides education to residents, staff and families to address dementia stigma and uses blood tests and digital cognitive assessments to indicate which residents need a referral to specialists for a formal dementia diagnosis. This program will improve dementia knowledge and care leading to improved health and wellbeing for vulnerable people living in residential aged care.
Recipient: Monash University
Funding amount: $200,000.00
Project title: The Australian Consortium for Aged Care – Quality Measurement Toolbox (ACAC-QMET): Improving Quality of Care through Better Measurement and Evaluation
Project summary: The Australian Consortium for Aged Care (ACAC) will improve the quality of care provided to older Australians by defining what constitutes high quality care and the tools needed to monitor this across care settings. ACAC will generate the best quality evidence to inform the key components needed to provide high quality person-centred care. Our work will help care providers and the government understand the delivery of care quality and drive quality improvement to improve health and wellbeing.
Recipient: University of South Australia
Funding amount: $2,999,445.80
Project title: The ENJOY Seniors Exercise Park IMP-ACT project: IMProving older people’s health through physical ACTivity: a hybrid II implementation project design
Project summary: The ENJOY IMP-ACT program is a translation research project built on an evidence based physical and social activity program. It aims to expand its impact on the community by incorporating an implementation framework to support local governments and the community to further engage older people in physical activity for better health. The program aims to enhance the physical and mental wellbeing and social connectedness of older people and build capacity and community engagement.
Recipient: University of Melbourne
Funding amount: $2,011,748.53
Project title: The right to rehabilitation for people with dementia: tackling stigma and implementing evidence-based interventions
Project summary: People with dementia are often denied treatments to help them maintain their everyday activities. This can be due to stigma and a lack of knowledge by health professionals. The overall aim of our project is to work with people with dementia, their care partners and service providers to develop and test resources and strategies to improve access to treatments that will assist people living with dementia maintain independence and wellbeing in the community for as long as possible.
Recipient: Monash University
Funding amount: $1,015,820.66
Project title: Transforming residential aged care through evidence-based informatics
Project summary: Poor medication management is a critical and, to date, intractable problem in aged care, impacting residents’ wellbeing. Informatics approaches have enormous potential to improve medication management, reduce the workload of aged care staff, & support residents and families access timely information. This project will demonstrate how informatics can support monitoring of medication quality, provide decision support to guide decision-making & provide consumers with real-time information.
Recipient: Macquarie University
Funding amount: $992,386.00

Project title: Unspoken, Unheard, Unmet: Improving Access to Preventative Health Care through Better Conversations about Care.

Project summary: Communication is important. We use it to express our needs, to connect with other people, to make choices, and to tell someone when something is wrong. Many older Australians who receive aged care services have difficulty communicating, but their care workers do not have the tools or resources to support them to express their needs, choices, or concerns. We will co-design and evaluate the “Better Conversations” program: resources and training to support important conversations about aged care.

Recipient: The University of Queensland
Funding amount: $2,014,394.3
— This media release has been provided from the office of The Hon. Anika Wells MP Minister for Aged Care Minister for Sport issued on 19 October 2022.

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Features Australia/NZ, Features Australia/NZ, Features Australia/NZ, Non-communicable Diseases (NCDs), Non-communicable Diseases (NCDs), Seniors' Health

Celebrities combine forces and voices to support people impacted by dementia, plus National Dementia Helpline now 24/7

Dementia Action Week takes place from 19 – 25 September 2022 in Australia.

Celebrity supporters, Ambassadors, Patron Ita Buttrose AC OBE and a person living with dementia have combined forces and lent their voices to an audiobook version of Dementia Australia’s Dementia Guide.

“The Dementia Guide is the go-to online resource for any person impacted by any form of dementia, of any age, in any location across Australia,” Ms Buttrose said.

“Speaking for the voices team, I know we have all been thrilled to contribute to The Dementia Guide Audiobook to increase the accessibility to vital information about dementia and the support available.

“Each person who has shared their voice has had an experience of dementia in their family and we have done this to raise awareness and help others to know they are not alone and that there is support available.”

Dementia Australia Ambassadors and voices Natarsha Belling, Stephanie Bendixsen, Takaya Honda, Mark Seymour, Denis Walter OAM, Pat Welsh and celebrity supporters Rhonda Burchmore OAM and Geraldine Hickey wholeheartedly echo Ita’s words and have enthusiastically backed the project.

Not just for people living with dementia, The Dementia Guide is also for friends, families and carers, and talks to the impact dementia may have on a person, the treatment, support and services they may need, and how loved ones can provide support.

Stephanie Bendixsen, video game critic and television presenter, said she added her voice to the audiobook as she sees the value in a more accessible resource for families, such as hers, who need to navigate life with dementia.

“My mother passed away from Alzheimer’s disease in 2018, and we really knew so little about dementia when she was diagnosed,” Ms Bendixsen said.

“This made it difficult to understand why certain things were happening with her behaviourally, and we struggled to understand what was truly going on inside her brain, how her physicality was affected and how best we could support her and my Dad, her main carer, as a family.
“Resources like this are so very valuable, and their accessibility even more so. Even though I consider myself a big reader – finding the time to sit down and read a book can be tricky when you have a busy lifestyle. I switched to audiobooks years ago so that I can absorb books while I’m driving, walking the dog, doing chores – it’s been life-changing. An easily accessible resource like this would have made a wonderful difference to me and my family when we were coming to terms with how Mum’s – and our lives – would change.”

The audiobook includes a welcome from Dementia Australia CEO Maree McCabe AM and a chapter recorded by Ann Pietsch, who is a Dementia Advocate and lives with dementia.

“I was invited to read one of the chapters and I personally think that The Dementia Guide is a valuable resource, making it available as an audio book is a great idea as it will now be easily available to more people living with dementia, carers, and families and the wider public,” Mrs Pietsch said.

This media release has been provided by DementiaAustralia.org media release issued on 17 August 2022.

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AFT Features, Non-communicable Diseases (NCDs), Wellness

Adopting a healthy lifestyle helps reduce the risk of dementia

Video

One of the greatest fears most people don’t speak about is cognitive decline and dementia. How do they cope in Malaysia, Singapore and Indonesia?

The World Health Organization (WHO) has just released its guidelines about how people can address this fear and reducing their risk of dementia. Believe it or not, it’s as simple as:
#Move8 fitness movement at KL Car Free Morning – photo courtesy www.move8.org.

  • getting regular exercise

  • not smoking

  • avoiding harmful use of alcohol

  • controlling their weight

  • eating a healthy diet

  • maintaining healthy blood pressure, cholesterol and blood sugar levels

And who’s a poster model for this? Malaysia’s and the world’s oldest Prime Minister Tun Dr. Mahahir Mohammad, of course! At the age of 93 years young, Tun M as he’s fondly known to Malaysians, said this, “I would advise people not to rest when they grow old because if you rest, you will soon become very weak and incapable, and may become senile. Be active after you reach retirement age.

Tun Dr. Mahathir Mohamad courtesy of https://aarondell.home.blog/tag/mahathir-mohamad/

It is the same as your muscles. If you don’t use your muscles and lie down all the time, the muscles cannot even carry your weight. You cannot stand. You cannot walk.

The brain is the same. If you don’t use your brain, you don’t think, you don’t read, you don’t write, the brain regresses and you become senile. So always be active,” Tun M advised.

In the press statement issued on 14 May 2019 from its Geneva headquarters, WHO Director-General Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus shares that in the number of people with dementia is expected to triple in the next 30 years. “We need to do everything we can to reduce our risk of dementia. The scientific evidence gathered for these Guidelines confirm what we have suspected for some time, that what is good for our heart, is also good for our brain.”

WHO’s Global Dementia Observatory, launched in December 2017, is a compilation of information about country activities and resources for dementia, such as national plans, dementia-friendly initiatives, awareness campaigns and facilities for care. Data from 21 countries, including Bangladesh, Chile, France, Japan, Jordan and Togo, have already been included, with a total of 80 countries now engaged in providing data.

Creating national policies and plans for dementia are among WHO’s key recommendations for countries in their efforts to manage this growing health challenge. During 2018, WHO provided support to countries such as Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Qatar, Slovenia and Sri Lanka to help them develop a comprehensive, multi-sectoral public health response to dementia.

An essential element of every national dementia plan is support for carers of people with dementia, said Dr Dévora Kestel, Director of the Department of Mental Health and Substance Abuse at WHO. “Dementia carers are very often family members who need to make considerable adjustments to their family and professional lives to care for their loved ones. This is why WHO created iSupport. iSupport is an online training programme providing carers of people with dementia with advice on overall management of care, dealing with behaviour changes and how to look after their own health.”

Dementia: a rapidly growing public health problem

Dementia is an illness characterized by a deterioration in cognitive function beyond what might be expected from normal ageing. It affects memory, thinking, orientation, comprehension, calculation, learning capacity, language and judgement. Dementia results from a variety of diseases and injuries that affect the brain, such as Alzheimer disease or stroke.

Dementia is a rapidly growing public health problem affecting around 50 million people globally. There are nearly 10 million new cases every year. Dementia is a major cause of disability and dependency among older people. This is a rampant non-communicable disease (NCD) and inflicts a heavy economic burden on societies as a whole, with the costs of caring for people with dementia estimated to rise to US$ 2 trillion annually by 2030. The increasing numbers of people with dementia, its significant social and economic impact and lack of curative treatment, make it imperative for countries to focus on reducing modifiable risk factors for dementia. Action area 3 of the Global action plan on the public health response to dementia 2017–2025 is risk reduction. Download the global action plan here.

Some highlights from the plan on the areas for action include: increasing prioritisation and awareness of dementia; reducing the risk of dementia; diagnosis, treatment and care; support for dementia carers; strengthening information systems for dementia; and research and innovation.

This topic has recently been covered by The Star newspaper in Malaysia, “Dealing with Dementia”.

Dementia patients require assistance with even the basic needs

And also in Singapore, their Ministry of Health website addresses citizen’s concerns about the ever rising occurrences of dementia in elderly folks. Find out more about dementia signs here.

Warning signs of dementia
Dementia affects memory, judgement, language, planning and behaviour.

The video above, is inspired courtesy from Indonesia’s popular poco-poco dance. Some believe this helps prevent Alzheimer’s and other forms of dementia by stimulating the brain. In the CGTN news channel video description, they share that Alzheimer’s affects the elderly, has no cure and experts have been looking for ways to prevent it.

Source: World Health Organisation // Ministry of Health Singapore // Ministry of Health Malaysia