Enhancing Dementia Practice Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2500 words

Enhancing Dementia Practice - Essay Example w of the most important strategies in Northern Ireland include: educating people about the possible signs and symptoms of dementia, creating a friendly community for people with dementia, creating public awareness about the importance of early diagnosis, integrating a wide-range of services that will support the specific needs of people with dementia, and extending necessary trainings and support of carers of people with dementia. Dementia is often characterised by having memory impairment and increased risk of having aphasia – language deficit, agnosia – perceptual disorder, and apraxia – motor functioning disorder (Mendez and Cummings, 2003, p. 6). Aside from having progressive memory loss, people with dementia can be very much disoriented (Gilmour and Brannelly, 2010). Likewise, there are cases wherein people with dementia experience cognitive deficit when it comes to comprehension and reasoning (Gilmour and Brannelly, 2010). Among the common types of dementia include Alzheimer’s disease (62%) followed by vascular dementia (17%), mixed dementia (10%), lewy-body dementia (4%), fronto-temporal dementia (2%), Parkinson’s dementia (2%), and others (3%) (Alzheimers Society, 2015a). As of 2015, roughly 20,966 people in Northern Ireland were diagnosed with dementia (Alzheimers Society, 2015a). By 2051, the number of people with dementia in Northern Ireland is expected to increase between 60,000 (Department of Health, Social Services and Public Safety, 2011) to 61,000 (DSDC, 2015). (See Figure I – Types of Dementia below) Almost half the number of people with dementia is receiving care and support in care homes (Department of Health, Social Services and Public Safety, 2011). To help improve the quality of health and social care services given to people with dementia, the Health Minister of Northern Ireland received a funding of  £6 million from the state government last September 2014 (Northern Ireland Executive, 2014).Through state funding, it is