ADLs are Activities of Daily Living, usually done during a normal day such as bathing, grooming, dressing, eating, and toileting. 

Agnosia is an inability to recognize things or people.

Alzheimer’s disease:  The most common form of dementia in which the person has trouble with forming new memories, understanding language, recognizing things or people, and performing learned motor movements.

Amnesia: A lack of ability to recall events.  In dementia, people have problems with recalling recent events.  For example, if you ask someone with Alzheimer’s what he or she ate for breakfast, they probably won’t remember… but may remember key events from the past.  In the early stages of Alzheimer’s’ people often get very good at covering up memory lapses.

Anti-anxiety medications:  People with Alzheimer’s disease frequently have anxiety.  The sensation that you don’t remember things provokes anxiety as well as many other aspects of the disease such as social isolation and communication challenges.  Anxiety is also known to worsen memory.  An example of an anti-anxiety medication is Ativan or Valium.  Side effects of these medications include drowsiness and unsteadiness.

Anti-depressants:  Medications that lessen the symptoms of depression in patients with low mood.  Anti-depressants include:  Prozac, Zoloft, Effexor, and Remeron. They also have side effects.

Aphasia is a problem with speaking or understanding language.  For example, when someone can’t find the words that he or she is trying to express or the person can’t understand what he or she is being told.

Apraxia is a problem with controlling the body.  Examples include difficulties walking, using a key, or shaving.

Delusions:  A fixed and false belief.

Dementia is a decline in mental function that interferes with a person’s ability to function independently.

Diversional Activities: Activities that serve to stimulate and distract a person, such as taking a ride.

Drop-off Activities:  Leaving a person with an activity to do on his or her own.

Environmental Problems:  Problems caused by the things surrounding a person, like noise and light.

Frontal Lobes: Areas in the front of the brain that control motivation, manners, judgment, self-control, and planning.

Frontotemporal Lobe Dementia:  Frontotemporal are parts of the brain that control motivation, emotion, judgment, self-control and the ability to plan.  When these regions are damaged, this may result in this type of dementia.  Individuals with this form of dementia may behave in socially inappropriate ways.  Someone with frontoemporal dementia may do things that are not appropriate like grabbing food off others’ plates.

Generic:  General name for a medicine; the chemical name.

Hallucinations:  Seeing and hearing things that aren’t present.

Hoarding:  People with dementia often collect objects (like buttons, sugar packs, jewelry, mail and food).  One risk with this behavior is that persons with dementia may hoard food and may consume the food after it has spoiled.  One thing that you can do is to give a box to the person suffering from Alzheimer’s along with some less important items to keep in the box.

Intellectual Activities: Activities that encourage thinking, such as going to a lecture.

Lack of Insight: When a person does not know anything is wrong with him or her.

Medication: Any substance, other than food, used in the prevention, diagnosis, treatment, or cure of the disease.

Memory enhancing drugs:  These medications may help decrease memory impairment or enhance the ability to think or reason. 

Neuroleptics are medications that are used to decrease hallucinations, delusions, or aggression.

Occipital Lobes: Areas in the back of the brain that are important for vision and making sense out of what you see.

Over-the-counter:  Medications bought without a doctor’s prescription.

Pacing: Walking back and forth in a driven way.

Parietal Lobes: Areas in the upper central part of the brain that are involved in spatial abilities, such as finding your way around your home.

Physical Activities:  Activities that use the body and help maintain health.

Physical Problems: Problems in the body that can affect behaviors, like fatigue or dental pain.

Prescription: Medications requiring a written order by a doctor.

Psychiatric Problems: Disorders of mood (such as depression), perception (such as hallucinations), or beliefs (such as delusions).

Rummaging:  Often people with dementia spend hours looking for things and moving objects around.  As in hoarding, give them a box of familiar items that they can rummage through.

Side Effects: An unintended effect of a medication.

Social Activities: Activities with other people that allow interaction.

Specialists:  For the treatment of Alzheimer’s disease, there is often a ‘team approach’ involving multiple different healthcare providers who have different areas of expertise.  These providers include physicians (Neurologists, Internists, Psychiatrists, as well as other physician specialists who may be involved in the care of other specific diseases), nurses, social workers and pharmacists.

Spontaneous Activities:  Unplanned activities that grow out of a person’s interest.

Sun downing is an observation that people with dementia often get more confused when the sun is going down – it may be a combination of fatigue plus the loss of the ability to orient oneself and see the environment when it becomes dark.

Task breakdown:  Breaking down a task into steps, to find out where the problem is happening.

Temporal Lobes: Areas on the side of the brain that are involved in memory, emotion, and understanding language.

Trade Name:  The name given to a drug by the company that makes it.

Treatment Plan:  Service plan; a program to treat a person’s physical, mental, and emotional health.

Vascular Dementia:  This type of dementia results from the failure of small vessels deep in the brain, responsible for movement control.  These problems may be the result of small strokes in the brain.  Typically people with vascular dementia can have ‘stiffness’ in movement as well as problems with coordination and tremors. 

Yelling, screaming or aggressive behavior:  Sometimes people with dementia yell, as they do not have the ability to express themselves using words.  We need to be alert that the cause of this yelling may be a cry to meet basic needs such as hunger, thirst, noise or crowds.  Again, the key is to look at what the cause may be as well as figuring out the best way to deal with the situation.  As a caregiver, you need to be careful of aggressive behavior and it may be important to give the person suffering with dementia his or her space until he or she settles down.

5 D Process:  A technique of problem solving for challenging issues.

Describe the behavior/challenge/symptom

Decode - Why does your loved one have this behavior/challenge/symptom.  Is it because of their thinking and memory problem?  Is it because of a physical or medical problem such as needing to go to the bathroom?  Is it a psychiatric problem such as depression?  Is it because of the environment, is the room too cold or is there to much noise?  Is it because of the approach of the caregiver? We don’t want to argue, lecture or rush.

Devise a plan, looking at the behavior/challenge/symptom and all the possible causes.  What can be done to change the behavior of your loved one?

Do it – Try the different solutions that you come up with, one at a time.

Determine if the solution works.  If it does, communicate it with everyone caring for your loved one.  If it doesn’t work, please don’t give up, try another approach.