https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dementia_praecox
the gist of this article is eerily implying that dementia exists sometimes from a young age and is rarely ever treated effectively or cured . in fact for over 80 years the terms dementia and schitzo were interchangeable . my mother certainly suffered from bipolar all her life and in late stage dementia a schitzo disorder reared up complete with paranoid delusions and hallucinations .
so if you wonder if your demented elder has always been nuts , id say probably ..
relax and enjoy the ride -- its largely hereditary..
My husband had paranoid delusion and hallucinations early in his dementia journey, as do many persons with Lewy Body Dementia. Often hallucinations are the first clue to family that something is wrong. No one suggested a schizo disorder, and there was NO previous suggestion of such a mental illness.
No doubt that people with mental disorders develop dementia such as people without mental disorders do. And some dementia symptoms are similar to symptoms of other disorders. After all, they are all related to a malfunctioning in the brain.
I don't think Coy was always nuts. I don't think that my mother was always nuts. As I read about some of the people being cared for by members here, ya, it sounds like some of them did have mental disorders from an early age.
Mental illness is often not treated effectively and seldom cured. There are many frontiers in medical science yet to be crossed.
im with dusty on her observations of dementia . my mom and aunt showed exascerbated levels of thoughts and behavior that was always irrational .
their dad was bats*it crazy . talked incessantly for as long as i knew him , even when everyone had left the room .
Pam I wonder about CJD, too; especially in the case of my lovely friend's lovely husband, who was not only diagnosed with every form of dementia going but also, in his young adulthood, was a dairy farmer.
I don't want to fuel any conspiracy theories, and I have zero support for this from any of my scientifically trained loved ones, but I suspect that eating burgers had sod all to do with it, and that over-liberal use of insecticides and pesticides a heck of a lot more. I notice they've changed an awful lot of formulae since the eighties.
only in the last few years has it been understood to be a terminal condition .
both of my female relatives had / have a diagnosic printout that shows disease in every organ , why would the brain be in perfect order in the presence of all this mayhem ? ie ; renal failure , poor liver function , coronary disease , arthritis , diabetes mellitis , copd , etc ..
why would a 55 yr old man ( myself ) with stage 3 liver fibrosis drink a beer anyway ?
my dad died at 72 after a lifetime of clean living and in fact preserving himself for an imagined afterlife . im inevitably going to die but im going to have lived first ..
Her mother had schizophrenia, which she got, according to MIL, from being hit by a taxi while crossing a street in London.
MIL refused to believe me when I told her that getting mowed down by a taxi might give a person a traumatic brain injury with symptoms that mimic schizophrenia, but it doesn't cause schizophrenia. Given that there's lots of bipolar disease and other kinds of mental illness in her family, it seems highly likely that MIL's mother was already ill when the taxi hit her.
My father had Alzheimer's and HIS mother was bipolar. Dad was always nervous and depressed, as well as being a high functioning alcoholic but he didn't start showing symptoms of dementia until he was almost 80. None of his siblings developed dementia, as far as I know, although one brother was very peculiar. However, his mental issues could have come from being on a troop ship that was blown up in the Pacific during WWII. Floating in the ocean for four days while clinging to a piece of wreckage would tend to make anybody a little nuts.
I think dementia has lots of different causes, and there's no reason why someone couldn't have a mental illness that gets worse with age, and then develop some form of dementia.
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i can almost believe that because i notice people who operate purely out of habit have their brain shut off and in fact act almost retarded upon a closer look .
closedminded and trying to avoid having to think . not leadership material by any means ..
ters had very little protection and that Agent Orange was easily breathed in..marymember
they go insane first . not eccentric , stark raving , heartbreaking INSANE ..
ill take an ambien in about an hour . lets hook up in our dreams and break some laws ..
condition yourself . aunt edna told me several weeks ago that she was three hundred years old . " ok " , " i brought ya biscuits and gravy " .
"eat your f - in breakfast methusilah " ..
I'm glad we don't live in an earlier time when people thought the only way of curing madness was to cast out demons. When the demons couldn't be cast out, what did they do? I don't know. It seems the only options would be to lock someone up or banish them. We have come a long way in the last few decades. I can still remember when mentally handicapped or ill people were institutionalized.
good answer , id agree ..
i think my next visit with behavioral health at the va will be a little shorter than usual . i love the gal but shes blurting out simplistic generalities about complicated stuff ..
i always wondered what would happen when i became older than the authorities and other figures of power in the community -- now i know . you wanna spread your middle and index fingers as wide as possible and jab them in the eyeballs with em ..
rocking , with or without a rocking chair sometimes indicates an opiate addiction . no offense intended at all but these meds used to be easy to obtain in this country .
i find hundreds of antique bottles in basements of old homes in this county . every dam one of them were some kind of morphine based elixer . we havent progressed . like booze , the government is straight up murdering people to take the drug industry and its proceeds for themselves .
one of the hepc meds im taking is 1000.00 a pill . despite the high cost of specialty meds in this country , the bulk of pharms profit still comes from 75 cent benzos , and opiates .. pot gets a wink and a nod now that state govts are manning the cash registers .
no wonder half the world hates the usa . for money we'll play make believe all day long ..
just kidding as always . you make a good point about shoddy medicine . my mom complained about pain in her hand once and a practitioner nearly doubled her scrip of hydro 10 ' s .
the next doc flipped out when he saw it , said it was enough to " hurt " her and reduced it by 50 % . my son walked in the front door of the hospital and told a quack that his dad was a jerk ( myself ) and walked out with 60 blue zans a month .
thats a real outrage by any standards .