ABSTRACT
This chapter reviews cognitive function measures used in local older populations; rather, an aim is to make out a case for the development and use of simple screening tests to detect age-associated dementia in the multi-ethnic and multilingual older population, for both clinical assessment and epidemiological purposes. Older blacks who present at mental health-care facilities face cultural and linguistic barriers. The problem of linguistic, rather than conceptual equivalence translation of measures into African languages is that the tools remain culturally biased, from which cosmos local, culture-specific terminology may be derived for use in the detection, measurement and treatment of mental illness. Clinicians and epidemiologists who have worked in the mental health care of older persons in South Africa have been predominantly white and entrenched in Western medicine. Language is the base of most instruments for screening for dementia; the instruments also typically include several tasks which call for repetition.
