Depression or Alzheimer's?
Aunt Chen is 75 years old.
After retiring, she has a rich living arrangement, traveling with her wife, and participating in various activities and ...... in the community
However, since the death of her wife 3 years ago, her life has changed significantly.
Aunt Chen doesn't like to go out more and more, and stays at home every day, always feeling that she can't lift her spirits.
I am listless during the day, I can't sleep at night, my memory is getting worse and worse, I don't want to do housework anymore.
The family thought that Aunt Chen had emotional problems because of the death of her wife, and she would get better one day.
It doesn't matter if you don't do housework, you can ask a nanny to take care of it anyway. However, Aunt Chen's "forgetfulness" is getting bigger and bigger.
It wasn't until one day, when Aunt Chen almost couldn't find her way home after going out, that the family realized the seriousness of her condition and took her to the hospital for treatment.
In the end, Aunt Chen was diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease.
If you want to know more, welcome to come to my live broadcast room on December 14, 20:00 in the evening, to learn about Alzheimer's disease together.
Doctor's Message:
Patients with early-stage dementia may present as "depressed".
As people reach old age, they are faced with a variety of losses: physical strength, health, social status, abilities, and even family and friends.
These realities inevitably cause distress to older people, and the resulting depression is not uncommon in older people (the prevalence of subclinical and clinical depression can reach 10% to 20%).
So, if you are in a bad mood, is it necessarily a depression problem or an emotional problem?
Alzheimer's disease, also known as senile dementia, is a chronic neurodegenerative disease that has an insidious onset and progressively develops.
Studies have found that patients with Alzheimer's disease can be depressed, anxious, and apathetic in the early stage, which also leads many people to treat early Alzheimer's disease as an ordinary emotional problem, and mistakenly think that it will get better naturally after a period of time.
But as Auntie Chen experienced, as the disease progressed, the problem became more and more serious: cognitive dysfunction became more and more obvious, the ability to take care of oneself gradually declined, and the person became less and less concerned about the surrounding environment and others, and finally became indifferent.
At this time, when I went to the hospital for diagnosis, I learned that I was suffering from senile dementia.
Bad mood:
Be wary of senile dementia
A foreign study conducted annual follow-up of more than 100 elderly people over 60 years old with depression and cognitive decline (non-dementia) in the community, and the results showed that more than 90% of them finally met the diagnosis of senile dementia.
It can be seen that depressive mood may be an early manifestation of senile dementia, and some patients with depression may have senile dementia.
This reminds people that when the elderly have problems such as poor mood, they should not be ignored and need to be alert to the possibility of Alzheimer's disease.
Especially when the patient's mood is more changeable, manifested as emotional instability, sometimes good and sometimes bad, weakened emotional control, increased irritability, or emotional apathy and suspiciousness, it is necessary to be alert to the possibility of senile dementia and take the patient to the hospital as soon as possible.
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