Dementia in the Elderly Population

Past studies have shown that the dementia syndrome prevalence increases with increase in age of elderly individuals and hence there is high possibility of such individuals becoming dependable as well as disable. This paper will explore various risks that the elderly population that have dementia are likely to face. Evaluating the risk of dementia in elderly people under long term care Fidecki et al. (2014) in their research attempted to determine the dementia risk that occurs in to ageing individuals under institutions of long-term care. The author explored past works of others researchers in this field. (2014), “female face greater risks of dementia as they grow old,” (p. This was also reflected in the past studies. Fidecki et al. (2014) proposed that decrease in ability functioning may predict mild cognitive impairment.

The findings of this researched proved that patients with secondary education have better memory function compared to those from primary school. (2017) claim that “functionality covers the positive aspect of the interaction between individual and contextual” while “disability refers to deficiencies of changes in body functions and structure…barrier to environmental factors” (p. Taina et al. (2017), supports that the prevalence of dementia syndrome increases in with individual’s age, and hence it forms one of the major cause of dependence and incapacity among elderly individuals. Taina et al. (2017) have used various scales to evaluate elderly people’s performance in activities of daily living (AVD) including Disability Assessment for Dementia (DAD) which measure amentia based on AVD. There has been an increase in the application of antidepressant medication among the elderly patients in the long-term care; as stated by Angel (2015) however the medication has effects on cognition.

He claimed that it had been found out that the antidepressants having a more negative side effect on cognition are those made of sedative compounds having a biochemical composition resulting in an anticholinergic effect. An example is the Amitriptyline (an example of a tricyclic antidepressant-TCA) has been found to reduce the visual performance and also results in reduced short-term memory task performance and a reduced thinking skills. Also, “There are some sedation effects with other types of antidepressants (non-TCAs)” (p. 64) an example of such drugs is the Mianserin which affects motor response at certain dosage amounts. The Functional Independence Measure (FIM) was applied to measure the daily activities. He claimed that the analysis was carried out with the windows PASW Statistics.