Organize Workgroup Meeting 1

Felipa Wilmot has created different workgroups to help us with the Dementia/Aging-Friendly Mission (a name chosen by the Organize Working group at our first meeting). The Organize working group consists of facilitators Candy Calmes and Felipa Wilmot. Members include: Rebecca White, Linda Sanchez, Lanette Guerra, Katy Hernandez, Robin Cohea, Tiffany Celaya, Karen Creekmore, Janie and myself, James Hamilton. At our meeting we discussed focusing on 3 of the characteristics of dementia friendly communities:

1.      Broad awareness and recognition of the signs of dementia and how to communicate with people with dementia.

2.      People with dementia can go about their daily activities, have a voice and make decisions, and contribute to community life for as long as possible with understanding, respect and support from the care partners and other community members.

3.      People with dementia can live safely and be as independent as possible in settings that promote physical, mental, intellectual, emotional, social and spiritual wellness.

* There are 3 more characteristics, but we will address those in the future.

For this blog group, I'd like to address each of these bullet points. I NEED you to add to the conversation, post your thoughts and feedback.

Broad awareness and recognition of the signs of dementia and how to communicate with people with dementia: There are 3 main parts of this focus: WHAT is dementia, how do we recognize dementia, and how do we communicate with someone who has dementia. Let's start with the first part of that focus - What IS dementia?

The Mayo clinic defines dementia as: Dementia describes a group of symptoms affecting memory, thinking and social abilities severely enough to interfere with your daily life. It isn't a specific disease, but several different diseases may cause dementia. *There are 100 types of dementia defined currently. Though dementia generally involves memory loss, memory loss has different causes. Having memory loss alone doesn't mean you have dementia. Some dementias do NOT involve memory loss. Alzheimer's disease is the most common cause of a progressive dementia in older adults, but there are a number of causes of dementia. Depending on the cause, some dementia symptoms may be reversible, called Metabolic dementias. Dementia is commonly caused by damage to or loss of nerve cells and their connections in the brain. Blood flow diminishment, brain damage or shrinkage, excess water are other causes of dementia. Depending on the area of the brain that's affected by the damage, dementia can affect people differently and cause different symptoms.

Dementias are often grouped by what they have in common, such as the protein or proteins deposited in the brain or the part of the brain that's affected. Some diseases look like dementias, such as those caused by a reaction to medications or vitamin deficiencies, and they might improve with treatment.