Spotlight Senior Services Phoenix: dementia awareness

Showing posts with label dementia awareness. Show all posts

Tuesday, September 13, 2016

6 Clever Tips to Prevent Wandering

Proactive Steps to Help Manage Wandering Behaviors

Learning a loved one has Alzheimer’s disease or another dementia can be frightening. But preparing for the behaviors that could result may help both individuals and their families better cope with the disease and keep loved ones safe.

Always ask yourself if that individual has an unmet need that could trigger a wandering incident. Proactive steps can help families reduce the risks for wandering and be better prepared if an incident occurs.

Get Ready

Consider setting up an alert network through the Missing Senior Network℠ program. This free web service allows family caregivers to create an account with a list of contacts to alert in the event a senior goes missing. The service then provides the family caregivers a way to alert the network of friends, families and businesses to be on the lookout for their missing senior if he or she wanders. Setting up this network in advance can help families be prepared to handle any incident of wandering.

Also, you can help protect an individual at risk of wandering by ensuring he or she always is wearing identification. Consider an ID bracelet, such as one from the MediAlert® + Alzheimer’s Association Safe Return® Program. This is a fee-based 24-hour nationwide emergency response service for individuals with Alzheimer’s disease or a related dementia who wander or have a medical emergency.

Prepare the Home

Safeguarding a home is one important preparedness step family caregivers can undertake for a loved one prone to wandering. Many products exist on the market to help keep older adults with dementia safe at home. These include alarms that attach to doors and windows, covers for doorknobs that help prevent an individual from leaving home, and higher-security locks. Other strategies include placing locks out of eye-level view, and painting doors and door frames the same color as walls to “camouflage” exits.

A caregiver named Arlene says her husband often awakes at night not knowing where he is or thinking it is time to get up. “So we put a motion detector in the bedroom,” she said. “That has worked well for me.”

Following, from Home Instead, Inc., franchisor of the Home Instead Senior Care® network, are other tips to be proactive about safety and wandering:

Make a path in the home where it is safe for an individual to wander. Closing off certain parts of a room or locking doors can help achieve this goal. Such paths also can be created outdoors – in a garden, for instance.
One family caregiver remembers her husband getting outdoors in the middle of the night in the dead of winter. “A fence kept him from wandering from home so he came into the garage. He was banging on the door at 5 a.m., which woke me up. If he had gotten out of the yard, he would possibly have died from the cold.” Install barriers and fences in the yard to help ensure that a loved one doesn’t wander from home or into unsafe territory.
Keep walkways well-lit. Add extra lights to entries, doorways, stairways, and areas between rooms and bathrooms. Use night lights in hallways, bedrooms and bathrooms to help prevent accidents and reduce disorientation.
Remove and disable guns or other weapons. The presence of a weapon in the home of a person with dementia may lead to unexpected danger. Dementia may cause a person to mistakenly believe that a familiar family member is an intruder.
Place medications in a locked drawer or cabinet. To help ensure that medications are taken safely, use a pill box organizer or keep a daily list and check off each medication as it is taken. Check out Simple Meds atSimpleMedsRx.com for a way to help seniors manage medications.
Remove tripping hazards. Keep floors and other surfaces clutter-free. Remove objects such as magazine racks, coffee tables and floor lamps.

For more information from the Home Instead Senior Care network and the Alzheimer’s Association about safeguarding a home for someone with Alzheimer’s, visit CaregiverStress.com and theAlzheimer’s Association. You’ll also learn more about how to deal with wandering and other common Alzheimer-related behaviors in the book “Confidence to Care.” Go to ConfidencetoCare.com for details about this resource as well as the accompanying free mobile app.

While there are many ways to be proactive in helping to manage wandering behaviors, it’s also important to know what to do when the unexpected happens. Check out what to do in a Wandering 911 situation.

Visit us online @ www.homeinstead.com/eastvalley.com

Tuesday, June 16, 2015

BrightStar Care ~ The Many Faces of Dementia

THE MANY FACES OF DEMENTIA

In honor of National Alzheimer’s and Brain Awareness Month, let’s take a look at another debilitating cognitve affliction – dementia. Here’s a breakdown of the dangerous neurocognitive disorder, according to alz.org:

Physicians often refer to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) to guide them in determining if an individual has dementia and, if so, the condition causing dementia. The latest edition of the manual, DSM-5, classifies dementia as a neurocognitive disorder.

Dementia may be either a major or a mild neurocognitive disorder. An individual must have evidence of significant cognitive decline, and the decline must interfere with independence in everyday activities (for example, assistance may be needed with complex activities such as paying bills or managing medications).

Furthermore, an individual must have evidence of modest cognitive decline, but the decline does not interfere with everyday activities (individuals can still perform complex activities such as paying bills or managing medications, but the activities require greater mental effort). When an individual has these or other symptoms of dementia, a physician must conduct tests to identify the cause.

Different causes of dementia are associated with distinct symptom patterns and brain abnormalities.

Increasing evidence from long-term observational and autopsy studies indicates that many people with dementia, especially those in the older age groups, have brain abnormalities associated with more than one cause of dementia, otherwise known as mixed dementia.

In some cases, individuals do not have dementia, but instead have a condition whose symptoms mimic those of dementia. Common causes of dementia-like symptoms are depression, delirium, side effects from medications, thyroid problems, certain vitamin deficiencies and excessive use of alcohol.

Unlike dementia, these conditions often may be reversed with treatment. One meta-analysis, a method of analysis in which results of multiple studies are examined, reported that 9 percent of people with dementia-like symptoms did not in fact have dementia, but had other conditions that were potentially reversible.

DIFFERENCES BETWEEN WOMEN AND MEN IN THE PREVALENCE OF ALZHEIMER’S DISEASE AND OTHER DEMENTIAS

More women than men have Alzheimer’s disease and other dementias. Almost two-thirds of Americans with Alzheimer’s are women. Of the 5.1 million people age 65 and older with Alzheimer’s in the United States, 3.2 million are women and 1.9 million are men.

There are a number of potential reasons why more women than men have Alzheimer’s disease and other dementias. The prevailing view has been that this discrepancy is due to the fact that women live longer than men on average, and older age is the greatest risk factor for Alzheimer’s.

Many studies of incidence (which indicates risk of developing disease) of have found no significant difference between men and women in the proportion who develop Alzheimer’s or other dementias at any given age.

However, limited new research suggests that risk could be higher for women, potentially due to biological or genetic variations or even different life experiences. Data from the Framingham Study suggests that because men have a higher rate of death from cardiovascular disease than women in middle age, men who survive beyond age 65 may have a healthier cardiovascular risk profile and thus a lower risk for dementia than women of the same age, though more research is needed to support this finding.

RACIAL AND ETHNIC DIFFERENCES

Although there are more non-Hispanic whites living with Alzheimer’s and other dementias than people of any other racial or ethnic group in the United States, older African-Americans and Hispanics are more likely than older whites to have Alzheimer’s disease and other dementias.

A review of many studies by an expert panel concluded that older African-Americans are about twice as likely to have Alzheimer’s and other dementias as older whites, and Hispanics are about one and one-half times as likely to have Alzheimer’s and other dementias as older whites.

Variations in health, lifestyle and socioeconomic risk factors across racial groups likely account for most of the differences in risk of Alzheimer’s disease and other dementias by race. Despite some evidence that the influence of genetic risk factors on Alzheimer’s and other dementias may differ by race, genetic factors do not appear to account for the large prevalence differences among racial groups.

Instead, health conditions such as cardiovascular disease and diabetes, which increase risk for Alzheimer’s disease and other dementias, are believed to account for these differences as they are more prevalent in African-American and Hispanic people.

Lower levels of education and other socioeconomic characteristics in these communities may also increase risk. Based on data for Medicare beneficiaries age 65 and older, Alzheimer’s disease or another dementia had been diagnosed in 8 percent of white older adults, 11 percent of African-Americans and 12 percent of Hispanics.

For more of our Alzheimer’s and Brain Awareness Month coverage, click here. Or, contact our local team to get any questions you have answered or request dementia care and support.

Visit us online @ www.BrightStarcare.com