To accelerate progress towards life-changing treatments, we must also change the conversation about dementia.
Today we’re launching our Dementia Attitudes Monitor Report – an in-depth analysis of the UK’s attitudes towards dementia and research.
Most people with dementia end up missing out on their hard-earned retirement years. But I’m missing out at an even earlier stage. I’m 59, with a decade of my working life left, but I have struggled to find employment ever since my diagnosis with a form of dementia called posterior cortical atrophy (PCA).
While we have known about the disproportionately high impact of dementia on women for some time, we’re not entirely clear of the reasoning behind these differences.
There are approximately 850,000 people living with dementia in the UK, 15,000 of whom come from black, Asian and minority ethnic (BAME) communities.
While our scientists have a battle on their hands finding new ways to fight the disease processes behind dementia, there’s another battle to win in moving the collective public understanding of dementia out of the dark ages.
So our way of thinking differently about communicating dementia is to try to reduce a complex area down to a simple visual metaphor.
Dementia isn’t a condition that just affects an individual, its impact is felt through whole families and across generations.
This week Alzheimer’s Research UK has launched a brand new website, ‘Dementia Explained’, designed to help children better understand dementia.