Public awareness concerning problematic of dementia Dementia is a problem that is socially becoming a very serious topic. Consequently, with the increasing aging of the population, the number of people who are suffering from it is growing. The symptoms of dementia include a decreasing of the intellectual and memory abilities in comparison with the level on which they were acquired before the illness started. Nonetheless dementia does not include the defects in intellect and memory only; it also includes other psychical functions. For example, dementia strongly affects the person in virtually all social situations and has a big impact on the quality of the patient´s life, as well as the life of his/her family and other people that are close to them. In most cases this illness starts very slowly. Thus, diagnosing dementia in advance gives the possibility of an early start of symptomatic treatment as well as maximum use of the therapeutical procedures available nowadays. At the same time it gives patients and their family time to prepare for future health, financial and law problems. The public cannot distinguish the pathological aspects of aging from the normal aspects of aging. Consequently, the usual idea of aging is still a perception that includes forgetting, change of personality and aggression. These symptoms are not the indivisible part of aging, but they can be the symptoms of pathological process. I believe that if the public accepts this fact, it can change its attitude to the elderly. The problem is that the public is still not informed enough. Considering the facts mentioned above which I regard as important, it seems we should make an effort to find out how much the public informed about the problems of dementia. The theoretical part of this work gives the basic information about the problems of dementia. It defines dementia, its epidemiology, etiopatogenezy, and it classifies the different kinds of dementia. It also deals with differential diagnostics, risk factors, diagnostics, treatment and prevention; and it also contains chapters dealing with dementia from the social, financial and law point of view. At the same time it gives information about the present possibilities of help in the institution of social care, and it also gives the list of the organizations in the Czech Republic which offer help in the care of people suffering with dementia. In the practical part of my theses I wanted to find out how much the adult population of Písek is informed about the problems of dementia. I used a method of a standardized questionnaire that consisted of 18 questions; and the research was done on a statistically significant group of adult inhabitants of the town Písek. The total number of distributed questionnaires was 250, 220 were filled in, out of which 25 were filled in a wrong way. The final number was 195 correctly filled in questionnaires that were possible to use. The hypothesis as stated :{\crqq} The adult population in the town of Písek is not informed enough about the problems of dementia{\crqq} has been confirmed, because the respondents were informed about it enough in only 42% of the sub-questions. I believe that it is important to inform the public. It would help to prevent or lower the risk of neglecting and disregard of the warning symptoms of the pathological process of aging. I wish this theses was available to the people working in health and social services and mainly to the public. Such an availability of the material would give them well-arranged basic information about the problems of dementia.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:nusl.cz/oai:invenio.nusl.cz:46302 |
| Date | January 2007 |
| Creators | GALLASOVÁ, Martina |
| Source Sets | Czech ETDs |
| Language | Czech |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | info:eu-repo/semantics/masterThesis |
| Rights | info:eu-repo/semantics/restrictedAccess |
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