Home Health 80% of Americans with dementia don’t know they have it…so could YOU spot the symptoms?

80% of Americans with dementia don’t know they have it…so could YOU spot the symptoms?

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A new study found that 80 percent of dementia patients don't know they have it. In the photo, Wendy Williams, whose diagnosis of frontotemporal dementia was made public in 2023.

Alarming study shows that people with early dementia don’t know the signs, according to a study.

Researchers at the University of Michigan looked at 300 people over the age of 65 who scored low on cognitive tests, a sign that they probably had dementia.

The team asked participants if anyone had ever diagnosed them with dementia.

Of them, 80 percent said they had never been told they had dementia and did not know they showed the signs.

The proportion was even higher among Mexican Americans, who made up the majority of the study population. The team found that 85 percent of this group did not know they had dementia.

The findings come as more research sheds light on early signs of the disease, which affects 8 million Americans.

While most people know that memory loss is a clear sign of dementia, other early signs, such as having trouble planning events, keeping up with bills, and struggling to find the right word, are less obvious.

Researchers said these patients may not know they have dementia because their doctors do not take enough time to evaluate them and are not trained to detect early signs.

A new study found that 80 percent of dementia patients don’t know they have it. In the photo, Wendy Williams, whose diagnosis of frontotemporal dementia was made public in 2023.

Being unable to learn new tasks and having difficulty focusing on a single task can be a sign of dementia, the memory-depriving condition that affects nearly 8 million Americans.

Being unable to learn new tasks and having difficulty focusing on a single task can be a sign of dementia, the condition that affects nearly 8 million Americans and robs them of their memory.

Dr. Lewis Morgenstern, study author and professor of neurology, neurosurgery and emergency medicine at the University of Michigan Medical School, said, “Lack of awareness of the diagnosis of dementia is a public health problem that must be addressed.”

‘The diagnosis of dementia provides the opportunity to seek treatment and home care services to support both patients and caregivers.

If the diagnosis is not given, or if it is not clearly understood, it is a missed opportunity.”

The researchers looked at 1,562 adults ages 65 and older recruited through the Brain Attack Surveillance in Corpus Christi (BASIC) cognitive study in Nueces County, Texas.

Of those, 322 scored low enough on cognitive tests to be considered patients with “probable dementia.”

The average age of the participants was 76 years and 55 percent of the adults surveyed were women.

The team found that 81 percent of adults with probable dementia had not been told they had the condition.

For Mexican Americans, this number increased to 85 percent.

Additionally, only seven percent of patients with suspected dementia had a primary care doctor, so their chances of being screened at a routine visit were lower.

Josh Martins-Caulfield, first author of the study and a medical student at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York City, said this knowledge gap could be due to the lack of a doctor-patient relationship.

He said: “The doctor may not be diagnosing the patient or may be hiding the diagnosis of dementia.”

‘In practice, doctors often hesitate to diagnose dementia, citing reasons such as lack of time with each patient to carry out the screening process or lack of specific training on dementia.

“The discomfort of providing the diagnosis may also lead them to wait for patients or family members to express concerns about memory problems rather than proactively starting discussions.”

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Currently, nearly 8 million Americans suffer from some form of dementia, and about 500,000 new cases are diagnosed each year.

Diagnoses are also expected to increase from 60,000 in 2020 to 179,000 per year in 2060.

While the root cause of dementia is still debated, scientists believe the disease is likely the result of an abnormal buildup of proteins (amyloid and tau) in and around brain cells.

Possible signs include memory loss, confusion, difficulty finding the right thing, difficulty completing previously simple tasks, mood swings, and poor judgment.

The new study had several limitations, the main one being that it was based on self-reported data, which could be subject to bias.

Focusing the population on one county could also result in a less diverse sample size.

The study was published Tuesday in the Journal of General Internal Medicine.

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