A psychological disorder, also known as a mental health issue, is an example of behavioural or psychological symptoms that impact various living areas and create distress for the person suffering from these symptoms. Since there are considerable misrepresentation and misunderstanding in the mainstream media about mental illness, this paper will cover the topic Alzheimer’s disease where the aim is to point out the misconceptions that the media are reinforcing compared to scientific sources.
Alzheimer’s is a type of dementia that is a set of symptoms which includes loss of memory, understanding, and even judgment. Today 747,000 people are diagnosed with dementia, with the expectation of having 257,800 new dementia cases per year in 2038 (Fiss, 2016). To begin with, there are so many factors that may be associated with Alzheimer’s disease such as age where most individuals with the disease are 65 and older. In addition, family history would also be considered as a factor that may lead to having Alzheimer. For example, having a family member diagnosed with Alzheimer would put you more at risk of developing the disease when you hit your sixties. Alzheimer disease is heredity, it tends to run in families, where the risk increases if more than one family member has the illness. As the website, Alzheimer’s Association stated “Scientists know genes are involved in Alzheimer’s” claimed that there are two types of genes that play a big role in detecting whether a person develops the disease or not: deterministic genes and risk genes. Alzheimer's genes have been found in both types”. In other words, according to the Alzheimer’s Association website, genes play a big role in increasing the risk of developing the disease. A contrasting view is that the article “The genetic landscape of Alzheimer disease: clinical implications and perspectives” scientists disagree the fact that Alzheimer disease is heredity, and in agreement with different studies they stated that the disease is common and any individual is at risk of developing it. Therefore, genes have nothing to do with Alzheimer. Additionally, the media propagandize that people with a mother who had Alzheimer at some point in her life and had twice as much brain shrinkage as the group of people who had a father or no parent. On the other hand, those who had a mother diagnosed with the disease had about one and a half times more whole brain atrophy compared to the group of people who had a father with the disease (Alzheimer's & Dementia Risk Factors). In the media’s opinion, it looks like females are more at risk of having Alzheimer disease than males; however, this claim is difficult to justify, according to the article “The genetic landscape of Alzheimer disease: clinical implications and perspectives” which states that both females and males are at risk and determining which one is more at risk has not been able to be proven yet, and it is important to know that there is ongoing research on the risk factors and diagnostic tools.
In general, Alzheimer is a disease of ageing and most of the time it strikes the ageing population especially the ones in the mid 60’s, where five million Americans are diagnosed with this disease and 5% have the early onset form that may strike the ageing population in either their 40’s or 50’s. As Dr. Holly Phillips a CBS News medical contributor stated, Alzheimer is a brain disease that involves the buildup of proteins and when they spread they cut off oxygen and nutrients to reach the brain cells where brain cells die. As brain cells crash, the mental health of the patients declines which also leads to a decline in the physical abilities of the patient. Alzheimer’s symptoms include memory loss, but it doesn’t mean that the patient would only lose memory, he or she would also lose the ability to get up and take care of their selves. These findings were supported by the journal article titled “Neuropsychiatric and cardiovascular risk factors along the Alzheimer's disease continuum”. Where the results of the study showed that within-person increases in depressive symptoms were significantly related to decreases on memory and executive functioning among cognitively normal individuals; within-person increases in neuropsychiatric symptoms among AD patients were associated with worse attention, language, visuospatial skills, and processing speed.
When it comes to finding the cure for Alzheimer’s disease there are some online articles that show that this disease is curable; for instance, an online article on sky news titled “Alzheimer's drug reduces psychosis symptoms without side effects” stated that there is a new drug that has been found to relieve some of the worst symptoms of Alzheimer’s disease. “Pimavanserin's ability to reduce psychotic symptoms in dementia is now being assessed in a large-scale clinical trial in the US.” A contrasting interpretation was suggested by Jack C. de la Torre where he stated in the journal article “Alzheimer’s Disease is Incurable but Preventable” Lost cognitive abilities involving memory, thoughts, reasoning, judgment, language, and emotions that define the individual, are consequently irreplaceable when their regulatory neuronal networks are fatally damaged”. But on the other hand, he mentioned that even though there is no treatment for Alzheimer disease, prevention may best provide a significant grace period that postpones cognitive decline. In other words, medication is only a prevented measure when it comes to Alzheimer disease. It will slow down the progression of the disease, but it can’t cure it.
When it comes to the causes of the Alzheimer disease, many researchers have indicated that Aluminum is one of the major contributors in causing the disease. There are many ways of getting the aluminium in your body, one way is by ingesting it, by applying it to your body, or by getting exposed to it. For instance, medication contains aluminium such as the aluminum that is found in most vitamins. Moreover, people don’t realize that when they are applying deodorant to their body they are exposing it to aluminium since all deodorant have aluminium in their composition. Also, people don’t know the fact that drinking water contains Al. The online article “Could Exposure to Aluminum Cause Alzheimer’s Disease?” claimed that there is little evidence that exposure to metallic Al, the Al oxides or its salts increases the risk for the AD, genetic damage or cancer. Obvious differences arise between the two approaches over the issue of the exposure to aluminum and if it leads to Alzheimer, a quite different assumption is made by the article “Long-term oral intake of aluminium or zinc does not accelerate Alzheimer pathology in AβPP and AβPP/tau transgenic mice”. After conducting an experiment the results showed that “long-term oral intake of Al or Zn does not accelerate AD pathology in transgenic mouse models. In the case of Al, we must carefully distinguish its neurotoxicity from a risk of enhancing AD pathology when we interpret the results of in vitro studies in which the relationship of observed cellular changes to the human AD is speculative” which indicated that oral intake of excess Al is not a factor for causing AD.
In conclusion, media is not always accurate in representing and interpreting research done on the Alzheimer disease. When it comes to the disease, the media most of the time contradicts the researchers and their findings. With the exception of one point, both media and scientific researchers agreed on institutionalized Alzheimer patients have a higher score of cognitive function than the non-institutionalized Alzheimer patients. On the other hand, when it comes to whether aluminium is one of the causes of Alzheimer disease the media differs from the scientific researchers. While the media propagandizes that aluminium is one of the major factors of Alzheimer disease, the scientific researchers deny the idea of the involvement of aluminium. In addition, scientific researchers disagree with the media on whether the Alzheimer disease is heredity or not. Alzheimer disease existed all the time since the beginning of life, but researchers started seriously working on it in the 20th century, therefore not enough studies are made to prove the causes or to find the cure for Alzheimer disease. Therefore, people are confused most of the time when it comes to whether to believe the mainstream media or the scientific researchers since it is a recent disease and not enough has been done to conclude any major discovery in Alzheimer disease.