Alzheimer's
By Maya Walker
What is a Psychological Disorder?
A psychological disorder is behavior patterns or mental processes that cause serious personal suffering or interfere with a person's ability to cope with everyday life.
Major Disorder Classifications
- Anxiety Disorder: A generalized state of dread or uneasiness that occurs in response to a vague or imagined danger.
- Mood Disorder: Mood changes that seem inappropriate for or inconsistent with the situations to which they are responding to.
- Dissociative Disorder: The separation of certain personality components or mental processes from conscious thought.
- Somatoform Disorder: Expression of psychological distress through physical symptoms.
- Schizophrenia Disorder: A serious psychological disorder characterized by loss of contact with reality and distortions in thinking, perception, emotion, and behavior.
- Personality Disorder: A pattern of inflexible traits that disrupts social life or work and causes distress.
What is Alzheimer's?
Alzheimer's is a cognitive disorder. It is a disease that destroys memory and other important mental processes.
Signs/Symptoms
- repetition of statements and questions, without realizing that they've said the question before
- routinely misplace possessions, often putting them in illogical locations
- eventually forget the names of family members and everyday objects
- difficulty preforming once-routine tasks that involve sequential steps
- trouble responding effectively to everyday situations
Facts and Data
1 in 9 people are estimated to die from Alzheimer's annually, and it affects women more. (2 in 3 cases are women).
Current Research
Before Alzheimer's was discovered, patients were just told they were being forgetful and didn't receive any treatment. Scientists are still looking to find a cure, but they have found drugs that slow Alzheimer's.
Connections
Rosa Parks and Ronald Reagan have passed away due to Alzheimer's.There are several movies that depict Alzheimer's, but more famous examples are The Notebook and Still Alice.
Plan of Treatment
There are no known cures for Alzheimer's, but there are two types of drugs that slow the cognitive deterioration that the disease causes. Patients usually take cholinesterase inhibitors and memantine. Less than half of the people that use these drugs see any improvement in their symptoms. Treatment for this disease is a type of Biological Therapy, since the patients are taking drugs the affect the nervous system.