Skip to main content

Talking To Your Loved Ones About Dementia Testing

Talking about dementia testing can be threatening, and convincing your loved ones to take a test can be challenging.  However, it's an important thing to do.  No one wants to regret it later if they could have given their loved ones timely help to extend their healthy life. 

In this post we help you prepare for talking to your loved ones about dementia testing in a way that is positive and constructive.  The right approach can help alleviate any fears and contribute to you reaching a positive result for all.

Keep it Positive

Because it is a sensitive and personal subject, conversations about dementia testing can be emotional, and even confrontational.  It is common to react to fear with anger or by closing up and becoming non-communicative.  Such reactions can get in the way of testing.

To avoid negative reactions, it can be helpful to present the test as an activity you can do together, that has the added value of checking that your loved ones do NOT show signs of cognitive impairment.  This is instead of presenting it as a test of WHETHER they have dementia.  This phrasing may seem trivial, but in our experience, it removes any suggestion or accusation that your loved one already has dementia.  Instead, it is presented as a potential confirmation of a healthy mind.

It can also be comforting for your loved one if you explain that you can do the test regularly.  This makes it less of a special and frightening occasion.  The test should be done at most every three months.  This regular communication can help improve your relationship by keeping you talking to each other, and giving you both peace of mind.  It is possible that your loved one has also been worried about dementia.

Our Cognitive Health App is a helpful test, but not a replacement for professional medical testing.  If you see consistently low scores, or the scores start dropping, you should encourage your loved one to talk to a medical professional for medical evaluation and appropriate advice.  The test history from our app can be helpful to show any health professional why you're worried.

Photo by Jonathan Banks (CC BY 2.0)

Be Prepared to Drop It and Give It Time

If the conversation about testing becomes too agitated or emotional, you should be ready to drop the topic for now.  You can always come back to it later, when they are a bit more used to the idea.  You can also try to communicate through someone else to change your loved one's feelings around testing.  Be empathetic and patient and avoid damaging your relationship with your loved ones.

Early Detection Means You Can Help 

Though there is no cure for dementia yet, catching early signs means you can reduce the probability and speed of its advance.  Dementia can be slowed down through cognitive exercises and lifestyle changes.  There is also medication that counteract some of the effects of dementia, and there are ways of supporting dementia sufferers both physically and emotionally.

All the treatments have a greater chance of success if you catch symptoms early.  This is why we have developed our Cognitive Health App and given everyone a free introductory period.

We will do a separate blog post later, dedicated to things that that can be done to delay the onset of dementia and to support people who suffer from dementia. 

Sources and Further Reading

Here are the sources we used for this post.  If you want more information, pleas follow the links.

For any further question about dementia, The UK Alzheimer's Society run a free Dementia Support Line.  Similar support lines are also available in other contries. 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Help Us Create AI for Dementia Detection

With your help, we want to create Artificial Intelligence to fight dementia.  Anonymous test data from our app can train AI algorithms to recognize early signs of dementia before they become severe and obvious.  The AI can examine your voice, speech or eye movements, removing the need for lengthy tests, and if you start showing signs of dementia, you can take effective early action to delay or even prevent the development of the disease. Our hope is that an AI dementia detection model will allow thousands of people to get diagnosed..  We know that currently most early stage dementia goes undetected even though we know that early action is critical in delayng or preventing severe symptoms.  A publicly available AI can help  anyone who wants to use it independent of wealth or geographical location. Please, help us fight dementia everywhere by using our app to test your loved ones and to get tested yourself. Technology Or team has decades of experience with da...
Post a Comment
Read more

Using the KindbotCare App - A Quick Introduction

Our care app lets you test your loved ones for signs of cognitive impairment and dementia.  It also allows you to track their results over time to catch any changes for the worse and signs of dementia that should be looked at by a doctor.  The app is intuitive and requires little more than a login and an internet connection.  Your loved ones will have tasks presented to them which will test their memory and understanding.  You will follow along remotely and in real time, recording whether or not they give the right answers by ticking the given boxes. After you have registered to use the app, doing a test currently includes the following steps: Connect with the person you are administering the test to by voice call before you start. Start a new test from the app (while you're still on the voice call)  Send the tests Internet link to your loved one so they can connect (the app will show you when they’re connected)  Read the instructions for each task to your ...
Post a Comment
Read more

When Should I Start Checking My Loved Ones for Dementia?

It's never too early to check someone you love for dementia.  In the UK alone, 78,000 people under 65 live with 'young onset dementia'.  There have been cases as young as 32.  It is also possible to detect dementia up to nine years before it is typically diagnosed. However, after the age of 65, the probability of dementia increases rapidly from 1 in 100, for ages 65 to 69, to 1 in 5 for ages 85 to 89. Given these facts, we suggest that a sensible testing rate for your loved ones is once a year below 60, twice a year from 60 to 70, and four times per year from 70 upwards.  In total, 500 thousand people in the UK have a dementia diagnosis and one million people are estimated to live with dementia.  Women make up 65% of dementia sufferers, while 35% are men.  It is the leading cause of death for women and the second leading cause of death for men. Sign up here  to use our app to test you loved ones for dementia. Photo by Kampus Production Testing will tel...
Post a Comment
Read more