Estimating the Prevalence of Dementia and Mild Cognitive Impairment in the US: The 2016 Health and Retirement Study Harmonized Cognitive Assessment Protocol Project | Dementia and Cognitive Impairment | JAMA Neurology | JAMA Network

Estimating the Prevalence of Dementia and Mild Cognitive Impairment in the US: The 2016 Health and Retirement Study Harmonized Cognitive Assessment Protocol Project | Dementia and Cognitive Impairment | JAMA Neurology | JAMA Network

Estimating the Prevalence of Dementia and Mild Cognitive Impairment in the US: The 2016 Health and Retirement Study Harmonized Cognitive Assessment Protocol Project | Dementia and Cognitive Impairment | JAMA Neurology | JAMA Network

We once refused to talk about cancer.
We now “politely” ignore mental changes with age.

If you have worked in social services with older people, this study confirms what you have always seen. And you can see cognitive changes with older family and friends.

You will see a lot of writing about prevention and treatment. Those have good use. But leave out too many people.

We need accommodation. We have lots of aging people with mental changes. Lots of them. We need better lives for them.

We live in a culture that has recently come to strongly favor recalling details and procedures.

The “cognitive load” of daily activities, both essential and pleasing, has increased greatly in a generation.

To use a cliche, where once snapshots would have arrived in the mail, it was a Kodak ad, we now expect grandma to get online and use social media to see photos of the grandchildren.

Don’t dismiss the cliche. Feeling connected is essential, and becomes much harder in our culture that isolates the older.

Ordering food or groceries for delivery now requires using the app or website.

Etc

So far, the always inadequate response has sent underpaid and understaffed humans to help humans use a human built system the aging humans cannot use well.

Dumb. We use inadequate staffing to ameliorate the problems of automation. Dumb.