Dementia is likely to be New Zealand’s greatest and worst understood drawback. It is rising quickly in our ever-ageing inhabitants – virtually everybody can have a member of the family or know somebody who suffers from some type of the illness. It is already the primary reason for loss of life in Britain and for girls in Australia and the identical development seems more likely to occur right here.
But we do not speak about dementia a lot. Maybe it is comprehensible because the dialog may be painful. Many sufferers discover their very own kids and grandchildren change into unrecognisable as they’re decreased to a child-like state with solely reminiscences from their youth. Relations in flip watch helplessly as they’re misplaced to their dad and mom and grandparents. They see their family members change into annoyed and frightened as they overlook find out how to carry out primary each day rituals.
Herald journalists Mike Scott and Carolyne Meng-Yee determined it was time to start out speaking concerning the “D-word”, as Meng-Yee places it, in The Brains Belief, our new six-part on-line video sequence funded by New Zealand On Air. Within the article beneath, she recollects how she and Scott got here up with a plan to demystify the illness and inform the tales of devoted carers and scientists on the lookout for a treatment. And as Meng-Yee explains, for each her and Scott this was greater than a narrative – it was private.
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