It’s Dementia Action Week 2022
This Dementia Action Week (or #DAW2022) has been the first for over two years with large numbers of in-person activities and events. It’s fantastic to meeting fellow dementia researchers, professionals, and lived experts again and make sure that we all collectively push towards much bigger action to address dementia.
Dementia Action Week takes place every year in May, to raise awareness and spring into action to address dementia – not just to find that all elusive cure one day, but more so to provide much better care and support and access to diagnosis for the 900,000 people living with dementia, and their hundreds of thousands of carers, in the UK. This year’s theme is all about diagnosis, and the slogan this year is “It’s not called getting old, it’s called getting ill”. Whilst we know that not all dementias are equally affected by memory loss, it is one of the most common symptoms of dementia. Hopefully, more people recognising this symptom as part of a possible dementia will make people seek professional help sooner than later.
Why is it so important to get a timely diagnosis? There may be no cure, yet, but receiving an official diagnosis can provide some relief to the person and their family, knowing that it is the illness that affects the person. However, during the pandemic, over 30,000 fewer people received a diagnosis of dementia, and the diagnosis rates were by no means brilliant before COVID-19. Some people wait years to receive a diagnosis, which often can be incorrect and offer a diagnosis of the wrong dementia subtype. Many people also have had extremely bad experiences of the delivery of the diagnosis, receiving a quick message from their GP and being left to their own devices afterwards. Clearly, things have to change.
Attending the annual Alzheimer’s Society conference this week in London was clearly a highlight. After too long, meeting friends, familiar and new faces from a variety of backgrounds was great. The good thing about the conference was its inclusion of people with lived experiences of dementia, including Gina and Trevor hosting the conference. The most memorable moment was Joy, who is living with dementia, grabbing a mic and walking up to our current Health Secretary in front of 500 delegates, telling him things need to change now for those living with dementia, and caring for someone. Not in 10 years’ time. I wish that had made it into the frontpage news the next day.
Here at the Liverpool Dementia & Ageing Research Forum, we’ve hosted our regular webinar, this time presented by final year DClin trainee Fran Chaisty, focusing on her research into care home staff experiences and training needs of older residents’ sexuality. We are also uploading regular member blogs this week, more so than usual, to share some of the many stories of the Forum members. First one up was Hayley Hogan from the Alzheimer’s Society, a regular attendee of events, followed by Dr Alys Griffiths from the University of Liverpool. Watch out for Ruth Eley from TIDE sharing her experiences too. The University has also released a blog about our COVID-19 care home research, and of course, let’s not forget the latest The Ageing Scientist podcast interviewing the Alzheimer’s Society and carer Hilary Tetlow about what DAW means to them.
If we can all do a little bit to raise awareness, and do something to address dementia, we definitely will get there sooner.
If you want to engage with the Liverpool Dementia & Ageing Research Forum, you can sign up now to the next free public webinar taking place on the 20th of July 1-2 pm, featuring Dr Warren Donnellan’s research into dementia carer resilience.
