Dementia is a disease that occurs when there is an injury to the brain or the brain goes through a traumatic experience. This disease is basically a collection of symptoms in which the underlying commonality is that they all are a result of decreased cognitive function. Dementia is often confused with memory loss but it is important to understand that while memory loss may be a normal consequence of ageing, dementia is not. It is indeed a very grave disease that can affect your day to day functioning, your priorities in life and even the health of your relationships. Fortunately, if they are caught at an early age, symptoms of dementia are completely treatable and this ensures that you can continue to live life as before. However, in order to recognize the symptoms of dementia in yourself or your loved ones, you need to be aware of them. Here are a few common symptoms associated with the disease.
This is one of the earliest symptoms of dementia along with being one of the most easily recognizable ones. The person suffering keeps repeating what they may have said just a few minutes earlier and also has trouble recalling where they put an object a short while back.
Another common symptom, the person suffering from dementia is often unable to come up with the correct word to use during the conversation. They try to work around this by describing the word or using synonyms but the problem is recurrent.
Everyday chores like cooking, cleaning and driving become a problem for the patient because he or she tends to lose the pattern in which these tasks are performed and feels lost regarding how to go about them.
A common symptom of dementia is that the person suffering suddenly undergoes a random change in personality in the sense that a quiet person might suddenly become friendly and sociable and vice versa.
This symptom can actually be dangerous for the patient as well as the people around him. Dementia patients are prone to extreme changes in moods in a very erratic and random rhythm. Fits of intense anger are characteristic of these mood swings and the patient can become quite violent during these.
One of the characteristic symptoms of dementia is poor judgment. The person suffering from this disease may not know how to make sudden decisions like what he should do in case of an emergency, for example.
It becomes obvious that a person has symptoms of dementia when they are observed to have behavior disorders. This means that the person randomly becomes incredibly suspicious of those around him and paranoid regarding his surroundings when such behavior is unusual for him generally in life.
Another prominent symptom of dementia is that the person suffering from it is very disoriented and bewildered when placed in a new environment. In some cases, the person might even start wandering about trying to look for a way to get back to a recognizable situation.
