Latest News

The Penn Memory Center is pleased to invite our patients and friends to a monthly pop-up café at Christ Church Neighborhood House in Old City on Friday, July 28, 2017. This program is exclusively for people with memory problems, including Alzheimer’s disease, and their partners/families/caregivers. This month’s featured artist is drummer Deke Kincade of Deke Kincade Rhythm, who will be facilitating a drum circle at the event.

By Chloe Elmer

Dementia doesn’t just cause memory loss; there are often other symptoms present. Stigma and denial of families and caregivers from the resulting symptoms, such as depression and delirium, can lead to a delayed-treatment time.

A recent Philadelphia Inquirer entitled “‘Mom, I Didn’t Steal Your Dentures’: Coping When Dementia Turns to Delusion,” by Stacey Burling, a medical writer for the Philadelphia Inquirer, says “70 percent to 90 percent of people with dementia have psychiatric symptoms at some point.”

Delusions and paranoia may turn to aggression or hallucinations. This article explores this issue as it relates to dementia, why it sometimes takes so long for families or caregivers to seek help for the patient, and why it’s important for the patient to be seen sooner.

Olga Achildi, MD, a clinician at the Penn Memory Center and geriatric psychiatrist and medical director for the inpatient psychiatry unit of Pennsylvania Hospital, says the delay isn’t due to just stigma, but the denial by family members that their loved one is affected.

“They don’t want to interpret somebody’s agitation as a psychiatric symptom of dementia,” Achildi told Burling, adding that families should seek help when they need it “because it’s a lot easier to manage these psychiatric symptoms earlier on without them getting out of control.”

But Achildi says in the meantime, for caregivers, remember the next time someone they are caring for with dementia says something outlandish that “it’s the disease talking,” and find ways to neutralize the situation.

Read the whole article on Philly.com.

Photo from IStock.com

Aging in America is, predominately, a problem for the nation’s daughters and daughters-in-law, and proposed cuts to Medicaid will hurt these caregivers and the people they care for, PMC Co-Director Jason Karlawish wrote in his latest Forbes column.

(Photo by Janice Bonsu)

By Janice M. Bonsu

Every Saturday for four months, I laced up my sneakers for a two-hour program called “Dance for Health: Active Body, Active Mind,” where older adults came together to engage in physical and intergenerational activity to promote brain health.

Usually, these Saturdays were spent learning line dances like the Bop and Charleston — dances that, as a 23-year-old, I was learning for the first time — in an effort to increase participants’ physical activity and, therefore, help preserve cognitive health. But the surprise beneficiaries turned out to be the high school students who participated in monthly intergenerational activities. These students showed up hoping to learn about cooking and gardening; they left with a roadmap for healthy aging.

By David Ney

Every day, patients with Alzheimer’s disease live a unique challenge. Their disease is a leading cause of disability in older adults, but they have no medical treatments to slow its progression and preserve their quality of life. Instead of medications, their quality of life is largely determined by how people without the disease treat them.

When people hold negative beliefs or attitudes about Alzheimer’s disease, they may stereotype, isolate, or discriminate against patients. Even when intentions are good, people can still patronize or pass unfair judgments about an individual’s abilities. The patients themselves feel poorly about themselves.

This is stigma.

Joshua Grill (Photo by Steve Zylius / UCI)

By Chloe Elmer

Clinicians face an unusual challenge when it comes to diagnosing patients with mild cognitive impairment, commonly called MCI, and what that may or may not mean for their future.

Not all MCI patients develop dementia — some may show no decline over a 10-year period — but the diagnosis can still be helpful. It fosters discussions between physician and patient/family about important issues such as long-term financial planning and expectations.

Meanwhile, recently-approved PET scans can help determine an “elevated risk” of developing Alzheimer’s disease dementia through the identification of amyloid, but clinicians must proceed with caution when discussing these scan results.

These were a few of the comments from researchers in a new guide for clinicians on effective communication with patients and families regarding the diagnosis and possible outcomes of MCI. The 12 recommendations were recently published in the journal “Alzheimer’s Research & Therapy Journal.”

Tigist Hailu addresses racial disparity in the rates of Alzheimer’s disease.

Tigist Hailu, Penn Memory Center director for diversity in research and education, spoke at Grace Tabernacle Baptist Church on Wednesday for an event sponsored by the Alpha Kappa Alpha sorority through the Alzheimer’s Association. The event was part of “The Longest Day,” a national awareness campaign by the Association held annually on the summer solstice.

Hailu spoke about the racial disparity of Alzheimer’s disease in the African-American community and how to get involved in research, specifically by joining the Healthy Brain Research Registry.