It is not easy to take care of some­one suf­fer­ing from Alzheimer’s Dis­ease. Qual­ity of life for both patients and care­givers usu­ally dete­ri­o­rate as the dis­ease pro­gresses. This issue also has an eco­nomic side: the care pro­vided by fam­ily mem­bers is val­ued at nearly $144 bil­lion. What would hap­pen if care­givers could not carry on any­more? As this arti­cle from the Huff­in­g­ton post reminds us, there is no pill to help fam­i­lies stay together longer, and have hap­pier lives. How­ever there are a grow­ing num­ber of non-pharmacologic inter­ven­tions that could achieve this.

Improv­ing qual­ity of life for indi­vid­u­als with demen­tia and their fam­i­lies is a fun­da­men­tal treat­ment goal, but con­sis­tently receives far less atten­tion and fund­ing than drug research.

There are a grow­ing num­ber of such non-pharmacologic inter­ven­tions […] These pro­grams meet the gold stan­dard for both drug and non-drug treat­ments: they have been proven effec­tive in ran­dom­ized con­trolled tri­als. And, unlike drug ther­apy, there are no adverse side effects.

We must rec­og­nize the impor­tance of coun­sel­ing, skills train­ing, and home envi­ron­men­tal inter­ven­tions, increase sup­port for fur­ther research, and help fam­i­lies con­nect with exist­ing proven programs

Com­ment: Did you know about these non-pharmacologic inter­ven­tions? Accord­ing to the authors of the arti­cle, “most fam­i­lies cop­ing with Alzheimer’s or other demen­tia never hear about” these. This reminds me of the “cog­ni­tive shop, a sort of one-stop shop­ping for every­thing from Alzheimer’s dis­ease pre­ven­tion to guided care for mild or mod­er­ate dis­ease” pro­posed Kosik and Clegg. Seems like a great idea: Infor­ma­tion is key in deal­ing with Alzheimer’s.

Be Socia­ble, Share!

•