What is a good website to teach me about dementia and how to care for someone with dementia?

Answer:

The Memory and Aging Center of the University of California San Francisco

The Center is at the forefront of discovering the causes, treatments and cures of dementia.

The staff at teh Center are committed to educating patients, their families and the public about dementia. They believe early diagnosis is the key to good treatment and care.

Visit their website for information about all the dementias, including

• Alzheimer’s Disease;
• Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS), the most common motor neuron disease in adults;
• Dementia with Lewy Bodies (DLB), the second most frequent cause of dementia in elderly adults;
• Frontotemporal dementia (FTD);
• Huntington’s Disease (HD);
• Mild Cognitive Impairment (MCI), covering memory and reasoning problems not serious enough to be labelled dementia;

Vascular Dementia (VaD), a sneakily progressive worsening of memory and other cognitive functions due to reduced blood flow to the brain.

The website gives information on medical and non-medical treatments, along with excellent practical tips for care-givers.
it also explains in easy-to-understand language:

• normal ageing
• speech and language
• memory
• social behaviour and personality
• emotions and behaviour
• executive function
• genetics.

The Memory and Aging Center also offers 20 quality videos that explain the neurological and behavioural changes that happen with the major dementias and provide tips on how to care for patients with dementia.

The videos are short – just lasting around 1 to 3 minutes – and are very practical. Titles include:

• Dementias: Caregiving and Diagnosis
• FTD: the most common dementia
• Loss of reasoning and sense of self in FTD
• FTD’s effect on behavior and language
• Workplace dynamics encountered with FTD
• Caregivers of FTD patients
• Tips on moving someone from the bed to a chair
• tips on helping someone sit up in bed
• tips for helping someone walk

Click here for the full list of videos.

Your goals:

1. visit the website of memory and aging center and download some articles
2. watch some of the videos
3. refer someone else to the site.
4. use some of the information you’ve learned