ABSTRACT
As the population ages, dementia is a growing social and healthcare problem. The financial challenge is huge, but in terms of emotional strain and physical exhaustion so is the price paid by caring families. Dementia is abnormal, not normal, and thus its origins are pathological and not the inevitable outcome of being old. The epidemic of dementia will reach a peak when the babies of the boom years between 1945 and 1965 enter 'old age' from 2010 onwards. Dementia is an umbrella term employed to denote the existence of a neuropsychological syndrome: typically, memory impairment, intellectual deterioration, behavioural incompetence and social inadequacy. Prevalence studies estimate that there are 636,000 people in the United Kingdom with dementia, yet, as there are no reliable ante-mortem markers for the most important causes of dementia, epidemiological studies rely on 'diagnoses' of dementia based upon clinical symptoms alone. Only the minority of elderly people with dementia live in hospital or other continuing care establishments.
