Sometimes people with dementia can experience changes in their personality or behaviour, and sometimes there are changes in other aspects of their mental state, such as changes in mood, sleep, hallucinations etc.

Dementia is increasingly common with age. The vast majority of people with dementia are over 65 years old and dementia rates double for every decade.

About one in four of us will develop dementia during our lifetime and, of course, at least a similar number of us will know at some time someone close to us who has dementia.

A high quality research environment

The most common cause is Alzheimer disease which accounts for 50-60% of dementia in Scotland. It is a disease of brain cells and at present there is no known cure.

It typically presents with a gradual onset of memory problems that causes the person to forget conversations, the names of people, where she has put things etc. It is a gradually progressive disease, but the rate of progression is difficult to predict.

Treatment of Dementia

There are drug treatments available that can halt the progression of the memory problems for a year or so, but they do not affect the underlying disease processes destroying the brain cells and their connections to each other.