What is dementia?

Watch Dr Susie Henley and Dr Jon Rohrer describe what dementia is, how it relates to Alzheimer’s disease, and how these conditions affect the brain.

• Dementia is an umbrella term for a number of different diseases that affect the brain in different ways.
• Dementia is defined as a disease that is progressive (it gets worse over time), affects more than one aspect of thinking (for example, memory, language, behaviour, visual processing) and is severe enough to affect everyday life.
• It’s estimated that there are over 850,000 people with dementia in the UK.
• Dementia doesn’t just affect the person with dementia, it affects the people around them; their family and friends.
• In this course we cover 4 less common forms of dementia and explore how they help us understand more common forms.
• Dementia is becoming increasingly recognised as a priority for health and social care, and for research.