SPECIAL REPORT: Dementia in Ireland - We must tackle risks at earlier age

Dementia is a true tsunami with the burden it imposes on increasing numbers of families, writes Ronan Collins

WHEN we say “brain failure”, most of us think of dementia or ‘declining memory’. Of the many age-related symptoms, many of us fear physical disability and ‘losing our mind’ most. Of all the age-related conditions we might get, illnesses such as stroke and dementia hold perhaps our greatest fears in later life.

It is somewhat strange, though perhaps understandable with our cultural inclination as a society ‘to speak least about what we fear most’, that we have been slower to advance within society and popular media the concepts of prevention, treatment, and adaptation when it comes to brain failure as opposed to many other disease states.