EVERY year in Scotland around 7,000 people are diagnosed with dementia.
Around 85% of them are over 65 and the majority turn out to have Alzheimer's disease. Already the total number living with some form of dementia has reached 84,000 and that is expected to double within 25 years as more and more of us survive conditions that saw off our forefathers.
This is a depressing prospect. There is a still a tendency to regard it as a one-way journey into confusion and forgetfulness, in which the ability to string words into sentences is steadily eclipsed. For those who are diagnosed and their families, especially those who were once articulate and effective communicators, dementia is frankly embarrassing, which helps to account for the fact that only around 40% of those with the condition are ever diagnosed. For family and friends, there is the distress of losing the person they love, long before death takes them.
At a global level, the figures are even more alarming. There are around 35 million today living with Alzheimer's or some other form of dementia but it remains a largely hidden issue. Something you are not supposed to talk about. Yet because many of those living in poorer countries are now living long enough to develop it, by 2050 it could affect more than 115m people.
The UK as a whole does not have a good record in diagnosing and treating dementia. The government invests eight times less in dementia research than cancer. The UK lingers at the bottom of the European league for Alzheimer's diagnosis.
However, things are looking up. Recently Andrew Lansley declared an ambition to make the UK a world leader in tackling dementia and Scottish Health Secretary Nicola Sturgeon has announced a guarantee of a year's post-diagnostic support for dementia sufferers, including support to stay connected with their local community and beyond.
As The Herald reveals today, a major new reminiscence project, involving the history of Scottish football and its stars is being used to trigger memories of dementia patients with dramatic effect. One lady reported that she arrived at a session with a confused old man and left with her husband. This project, which is being rolled out across Scotland and could become the latest Scottish export, demonstrates that with the right support dementia does not need to be a long dark tunnel. There may be no cure but dementia can be kept at bay.
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