Social Structures
Author: Sowmya Shrivastava, 3rd year BSc Psychology Student, Maynooth University, Research Intern for Mac MacLachlan at the ALL Institute
There is a growing realization that hospital employees and services must comprehend the complexities of caring for and treating dementia patients. The World Health Organisation (WHO) estimates that dementia rates will double every 20 years, reaching up to 115·4 million people with a diagnosis in 2050. A number of underlying neuropathological symptoms can lead to the diagnosis, which can create problems when trying to differentiate dementia from psychiatric disorders as the disease is found to often mimic them in presentation. Due to this, there is a broad research area in matters concerning the treatments and interventions for patients with dementia. Doctors and researchers have found that the disease modifying antibody drug Lecanemab slowed the decline in memory and mental agility by 27% in patients with mild Alzheimer’s disease but what about the other 73%? What steps can be taken to aid the other, larger part of people living with this degenerative disease?
A unimodal approach has been the most obvious route researchers have taken in order to find a cure for dementia; meaning that only one type of treatment route is used for treating the patient. However there is a downside to this one sided view. By conducting a research review on studies carried out who either took a pharmacological stand or a psychosocial step towards treatments for patients, it was found that both have delivered inadequate results in terms of validity and reliability. The data within research statistically shows that by solely applying a single approach to treating patients, i.e., only psychosocial interventions without administering any drug treatment, the rate of dementia development is slowed, but only at a miniscule level.
