Psychology affects me in a greater capacity than I truly realize. All around me, every day, there are people I encounter, and things I experience in my day-to-day life that involve psychology. One thing in particular that has greatly impacted me is dementia. My family has a history of it, and it has caused the demise of one family member I hold dear. Nothing compares to the pain and upset that dementia can bring upon an unsuspecting family.
Dementia is the umbrella term for a “decline in mental ability severe enough to interfere with daily life,” (What is Dementia?). Dementia has no specifications. It is a term that explains symptoms associated with declining memory or other thinking skills that is extreme enough to reduce one’s ability to perform everyday activities. Dementia can be incorrectly referred to as “senility”, which references the widespread belief that declining mental ability is just a normal part of aging. Dementia does not always mean that someone is just “getting on in years,” but rather that someone is experiencing a massive issue within his or her cognitive realm.
Dementia is caused by brain cell damage, which interferes with the brain cells’ ability to communicate with each other. When brain cells cannot communicate, thinking, as well as behavior and feelings, can be affected. There are different types of dementia, and they are all associated with different types of brain cell damage in particular regions of the brain. Dementia is usually a precursor to Alzheimer’s’ disease, as memory loss is one of the earliest and most recognizable symptoms of Alzheimer’s. Thankfully, my family member never progressed into the full stages of Alzheimer’s.
The glaring effects of dementia have personally impacted me. My great-grandmother, Mary Jane, showed the signs of dementia very early. She was getting on in years, and she was beginning to forget simple things. Nothing extreme, just topics such as what the conversation she was just having was about, what she was to get at the market, those kind of things. The family did not think much of it, and we just brushed it off as old age. Then, she began to get worse. She was forgetting how to tie shoes, put on socks, fix herself food, and how to do other basic daily tasks. It all became so much harder for the family from that point on.
My great-grandmother could no longer drive, and that was one of her favorite activities. The day she lost her license was the day she lost it all. She could no longer take herself and her gal pals to bingo, and it upset her. She was no longer independent, and it just made matters worse for her. As time rolled on, she forgot the people around her. My grandmother, Paula, who was her caretaker, quickly became “Patty Ann,” which is the nickname given to my grandmother’s sister. My grandmother’s brother, Bill, became “Bob,” Mary Jane’s husband who had already passed on. I became “Cheryl”, my mother, and my mother and uncle were virtually forgotten.
Nothing was worse than when Grandma Jane had to be put in a nursing home. It killed my grandmother to put her there. She was receiving no help with Grandma from her siblings, and she just could not care for her on her own. After she was put in the nursing home, Grandma became entirely catatonic. She would just look around at all of us, and she never spoke. She had entirely forgotten how to care for herself, and she did not remember any of us.
I was very young throughout this process, and I just could not understand why my grandmother was the way she was. It irritated me; it made me so angry and frustrated that I would snap at times. Then, when Grandma Jane passed during the spring, it all came crashing in on me. The woman that had taught me so much as a child, and had loved me so dearly, was gone. A disease that ate away at her memory and stopped her from remembering her loved ones took her, and it made me so upset. Dementia is truly a silent killer. It can wreck your world, and it can take away those you love the most. That is how psychology has impacted me, and how it changed my life forever.