As we age and become older we change physically and mentally. Delirium, Depression, and Dementia are some of the most common psychological diagnoses in older people today. This will affect the health of the person and others will affect the quality of life that the person will have. Older adult tends to be more affected than younger adults. Depression is a common mental disorder, characterized by sadness, loss of interest or pleasure, having the feelings of guilt or low self-worth, having disturbed sleep or appetite, or feelings of tiredness, and having poor concentration. Fear of falling is also a commonly reported specific phobia in older adults that can develop in adulthood (Wolitzky-Taylor et al., 2010; Mohlman et al., 2012). Depression …show more content…
Depression could be caused by a chemical imbalance in the brain that medication can correct. It is suggested that depression among older adults can be detected early if family members, and other people within the community recognize the warning signs. People experiencing depression are often sad and sometimes are having crying spells. They often are restless and have difficulty times sleeping. They feel fatigued and irritable and often have feelings of shame or worthlessness. Sometimes when older adults feel bored or lose interest in activities that they once enjoyed. When experiencing depression, they often have a hard time concentrating and making their own decisions. People who has problems with dementia may also be at risk of mal-nutrition. People with dementia rely on others to help them to organize their day to day life such as preparing their meals. People with dementia are at risk of mal-nutrition because they may not be physically able to provide themselves with a balanced diet, there may also be the issue that they are not able to remember whether they have eaten and therefore decide not to make themselves. Dementia is a progressive diagnosis that can take place over months or years.
In the Merriam Webster Dictionary, it states that depression can be a feeling of sadness, anger, anxiety, psychotic disorder that can be followed by sadness, inactivity, difficulty thinking and concentrating, decrease or increase on appetite, sleeping all day or not sleeping, hopelessness, and sometimes suicidal
Sometimes, dementia may have similar symptoms with other psychiatric diseases; however, medical specialists have developed a complex system to identify this illness. National Institute for Neurologial and Communicative Disorders and Stroke-Alzheimer’s Disease and Related Disorders Association define dementia based on the following criteria: 1) decline in cognitive functioning; 2) low score on the neuropsychological test; 3) neuropsychiatric dysfunction in minimum two cognitive areas; 4) absence of delirium (Zahdi and Ham 59). The first criterion is crucial. In order to obtain the detailed history of decline in the patient’s cognitive functions, the specialists should interview a person who has known the patient for a relatively long time and can share detailed information about the person’s cognitive disabilities and the time they started. Such cognitive dysfunctions may include
Depression Depression is the feeling of severe despondency and dejection or a mental condition. Being depressed is a normal reaction to a lost life, struggle, or injured self esteem. Depression also has many symptoms in which sometimes can cause a human their life. It's okay to feel sad and lonely up to the point when the feelings become overwhelming or when they involve physical symptoms that are long-term. These feelings can lead someone from not keeping a normal and active life.
Common Types of Dementia In general, dementia is defined as “a deterioration of cognitive functioning that impacts one’s ability to meet the intellectual demands of their daily life” (Maitra, 2007, p 184). Though there are multiple types of dementia, there is no specific testing to diagnose these different types. The symptoms and behavioral effects of the disease are used to help the doctor determine which form of dementia the patient most likely has. Symptoms can either onset slowly or show up as a rapid decline in ones cognitive function (Maitra, 2007).
Dementia is a disorder which causes the brain cells to deteriorate therefor causes a decline in several symptoms and affects a person’s mentality, capacity and how they go about their everyday life. NVQ 1.2 2) Describe the functions of the brain that are affected by dementia. There are many brain functions affected by dementia depending on which form of dementia the individual has. The temporal lobe’s functions affected are Memory loss for example forgetting things you have just been told or something you have just said so repeating yourself several times, balance, posture and vision can also be affected due to decline in health of the temporal lobe. Frontal lobe affects behaviour for example becoming withdrawn.
Mild depression is often characterized by anxiety, obsessive thoughts or actions, lack of interest in activities that the person used to enjoy, mood swings, and a general blue mood. Changes in your lifestyle, diet, relaxation practices, a regular amount of sleep, and supplementing with certain vitamins and minerals can improve the symptoms of mild depression and help you get your life back. Another cause of depression can be the emotional pain felt after losing a loved one. In many cases the loss can be very traumatic.
Depression is arguably one of the most commonly diagnosed mental health disorders and the World Health Organisation estimates that there are about 350 million sufferers worldwide (WHO, 2012). Depression is defined as a mood disorder where individuals experience long periods of clinical depression, this makes the sufferer’s ability to function normally each day extremely difficult and also causes great distress for the individual (Davey, 2015). Sutherland (1998) described “feelings of utter despondency, worthlessness, guilt, inability to concentrate and a loss of self-regard” (p. 101) in his own account of depression and suggests that these symptoms can be accompanied by high levels of anxiety. Other symptoms Sutherland (1998) mentions include changes in eating and sleeping patterns, a slowness of speech, thought processing and bodily movement and an increase in negative thoughts. There are various explanations for the causes of major depression and this essay will compare and contrast two of the most dominant explanations which are biological and psychological explanations.
Elderly people need special attention. One of the common age-related problem that affects a person’s ability to think, decrease in daily functioning, and memory loss that gets worsen through time is what we called dementia. It commonly occurs to elderly but is not considered as a normal part of aging. Dementia is defined as: “a syndrome – usually of a chronic or progressive nature – in which there is deterioration in cognitive function (i.e. the ability to process thought) beyond what might be expected from normal ageing. It affects memory, thinking, orientation, comprehension, calculation, learning capacity, language, and judgement.
Depression is an internalizing disorder that creates feelings of sadness, guilt and reduces energy. It has the ability to make small tasks seem very overwhelming. Depression affects aspects involving ones emotions, motivation, behavior, cognition and physicality’s. People who have reported depression are more women than men and they report having a loss of drive and spontaneity. Many of the common symptoms are feeling sad and miserable or even embarrassed and not being able to find pleasure in anything.
Once Alzheimer’s starts to progress, symptoms can change to the person becoming more difficult with refusing to do basic activities like bathing or sitting down. They also show signs of poor judgment and difficulty speaking and basic comprehension (“Alzheimer’s Disease”, 2011). Those who suffer from Alzheimer's forget the people and places they know because of the deterioration of their minds. The brains of Alzheimer’s patients are beginning to lose connections between the nerve cells in their brain. Without these specific connections, the neural function becomes weaker and the neurons will die out and damage will eventually spread around the rest of the brain.
This is the longest stage of Alzheimer`s and may last for many years. At this point, the person with Alzheimer`s will start getting frustrated and start showing signs of angry emotions quickly. Individuals are more apt to show unexpected behaviors, such as refusing to take a shower or eat. Since Alzheimer`s is caused by damage to the nerve cells in the brain, it makes it difficult to perform daily routines and express thoughts. Noticeable symptoms may include, forgetfulness of personal information, confusion about their location, difficulty choosing the proper clothing, difficulty controlling their bladder, problems sleeping or changes in their sleep pattern, risk of wandering off and getting lost, and suspicion and delusional
Early signs of dementia can be missed appointments, forgetting to take medication, not part taking in social activities, being withdrawn, confusion and being irritable. The person with dementia can become depressed and have very low self esteem. They can feel worthless because they can not carry out the very basics of active daily living. In Maslow Hierarchy of Need he states there are five basic needs these are Physiological which is food sleep water.
Slowly the degradation leads to the inability to accomplish common tasks. Alzheimer’s is the most common source of dementia. Dementia is the term for symptoms that consist of troubles with thinking, processing of information, and memory loss.
However effective treatment of depressed older adults, it often occurs with other medical illnesses and disabilities and it doubles an elderly person's risk of cardiac problems and increases their risk of death from this illness. Many research studies shown that the presence of depression increases the chances of death and depression reduces an elderly person's
The first sign is memory loss that disrupts daily life. This is the most common sign and it includes forgetting recently learned information, forgetting important dates, asking for the same information over and over, or increasingly needing to rely on memory aids and family members for things they used to handle on their own. Although forgetfulness is a common age-related change that is only if they are sometimes forgetting names or appointments but remembering them later