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dementia versus autism

longman

Dementia is very much a frontline issue. It costs £26 billion a year - autism has a cost but probably not on the same scale, and the response for autism is to constrain resources. Dementia is in focus because community action, such as Dementia Friends, can reduce some of the impact.

I'm not trying to detract from the importance of dementia, but although the causes are different, the impacts have similarities - social communication difficulties, including loss of connectivity with family and friends; anxiety and depression, clumsier and slower movement.

It seems strange that similar lifestyle impacts can get so much interest for one condition, while another condition with similar lifestyle implications has to struggle for funds and research.

In some ways the experiences of people living with autism could inform understanding of living with and better coping with the problems of dementia. Dementia is mostly about later life. Autism is a lifelong condition, and means people having to cope and adapt across a lifetime. That experience and insight must be valuable.

However no attempt has been made to generate Autism Friends. It is only a localised phenomena to have buddying systems in school, colleges, universities and the workplace. Why cannot the Dementia Friends concept be extended to benefit people with autism?

Also autism has not experienced the level of public focus now being given to dementia. So there ought to be many ways autism can benefit from new strategies for dementia, where there are comparable lifestyle issues.

But to benefit from any spin-off and interchange of ideas NAS and other organisations need to flag up the similarities and the cross-benefits.

How do others feel about this?

Parents

  • This is a good point to make - and perhaps the reason for the imbalance is that the relatives of those with dementia remember the person as they once were. There is a terrible sense of loss as well as a media-friendly story. That is not to denigrate in any way the impact of dementia on carers or those enduring it.

    There is no 'normal person' to remember when people are autistic, no one that people can identify with and think 'that could be me or my parents'. We are born autistic and are autistic all our lives, its not a condition because that implies something temporary.

    I'm also wary of drawing parallels between dementia and autism because some people already conflate the two and say that we show signs similar to dementia and therefore our brains must work in a similar way. As someone struggling against the system to keep a full-time job, that is not an idea that i want to gain currency!

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  • This is a good point to make - and perhaps the reason for the imbalance is that the relatives of those with dementia remember the person as they once were. There is a terrible sense of loss as well as a media-friendly story. That is not to denigrate in any way the impact of dementia on carers or those enduring it.

    There is no 'normal person' to remember when people are autistic, no one that people can identify with and think 'that could be me or my parents'. We are born autistic and are autistic all our lives, its not a condition because that implies something temporary.

    I'm also wary of drawing parallels between dementia and autism because some people already conflate the two and say that we show signs similar to dementia and therefore our brains must work in a similar way. As someone struggling against the system to keep a full-time job, that is not an idea that i want to gain currency!

Children
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