Age and Dementia
The subject matter of health inequalities has started to become a very huge problem in the medical and social field. There needs to be proper research about the risk reduction potential in regards to dementia in the US medical field. All the local authorities, as well as the professionals in healthcare , must be careful that the risk of an individual having dementia might be understood by a huge amount of factors. Some of the aspects are concrete, such as a person’s ethnicity, disabilities in learning , disparities in gender, and other things which might be caused by social and topographical factors (Watson, et al 2021). The inequalities of the whole scenario have to be addressed and there have to be proper developmental initiatives to reduce dementia risk.
Age is a big factor when it comes to dementia and the problems pertaining to dementia increases with age. The huge risk of dementia is present due to several reasons such as blood pressure which is high, increased number of diseases, and the weak immune system of the body. There are almost 41,000 people under the age of 65 who have dementia in the UK. This community of people might have to tackle many difficulties and discriminations if they are employed or if they have children to care for (Wu, et al 2018). The equality act of 2012 in the UK allows employers to provide a proper work adjustment for people with disabilities. The reduction of the stigma against people with dementia is a significant step towards the proper enabling of the people to agree and also to discuss the crisis that they might be facing.
63 percent of individuals with dementia are females and the other 40 percent are males. This is a huge disparity and can be narrowed down to the aspect that women live far longer than men do and becoming aged is the huge risk factor for this disease. There have been researches that have shown that there are many other factors that can also be a huge effect for the women and men who have dementia, but there is no a single evidence that women are more prone than men to have dementia at a given particular age (Farina, et al 2020).
There is 3 times greater evidence of dementia ethnic groups which are south Asian and Black Americans. In the year of 2011, there were 20,000 individuals with dementia from Black and South Asian ethnic groups from Wales and England. The people from these ethnic groups are more prone to cardiovascular diseases and hypertension. People in minority ethnic groups are less likely to receive any form of treatment of dementia for numerous reasons (Vestergaard, et al 2020). The first reason is that there are problems in accessing health services and there is a very poor understanding as well as awareness related to dementia. There is also the threat of stigma in various ethnic groups and communities. The pre-existing notions about dementia contribute a lot to the lack of proper research and healthcare initiatives that are related to dementia.
Gender
The prevalence of dementia is three times bigger with the people who have a disability with learning. Dementia is far more regular in people who have Down syndrome and the start of this disease starts earlier for them. The people who already have pre-existing health problems such as heart diseases and diabetes as well as depression are also at very great risk of developing dementia (Giebel, et al 2021).
There are several risk factors related to dementia and they are also connected to the socio-economic status and the lack of proper exercise activity and proper knowledge in the early years of childhood. There is the presence of a link between cigarette smoking and groups which pertain to socio-economic aspects. Smoking has been perceived as one of the biggest reasons for the inequal amount of death rates between the poor and the rich in the UK. Smoking is one of the huge factors which are risky and can cause dementia and several researchers have suggested the fact that it can also increase the risk of having dementia (Mar, et al 2019).
There is very little research about how people having dementia access proper healthcare and social care services after the diagnosis. There are a lot of disparities in the pathways of care for individuals with both young and late-onset of dementia. The aspect of lack of healthcare related to dementia has also increased during the COVID-19 pandemic. there are a huge number of people who have dementia and it has been a huge challenge for both their families and the whole society. Making people capable of living their life safely and healthily with this condition has become very critical coal for the health industry in the UK. The present National Health Service Policy in England generally concentrates on increasing the amounts of diagnoses of people who have dementia and they also plan to improve post-diagnosis healthcare. There is also the presence of a lot of research that focuses on the quality of life as well as good health outcomes concerning surviving with dementia (Westwood, et al 2020). There are a huge amount of research and studies that have used various types of quality of life procedures and speculated their associations with a huge change of psychological, social, and physical health factors. Even so, there has been very little explanation of the possible impact of living when a person has dementia.
Social services generally provide very important post-diagnostic care for individuals with dementia. These social support services can include daycare centres, peer support groups as well as home visits from getting us so that daily activities can be done via assistance. The services provide proper respite for unpaid carers and it also reduces the burden of the care to maintain the waiting of both the patient and the care. Accessing proper support services for patients with which you can provide significant opportunities for social engagement and also improve their well-being (Soto Ruiz de Gordoa, 2019). Even so, there are several inequalities when it comes to the people who have access to all of the services. For example, being from an ethnic minority group or living in a rural location can become barriers to accessing proper healthcare.
Ethnicity
People were diagnosed with dementia before the age of 65 which is generally known as young onset dementia and those who have a very rare form of dementia can also face a lot of challenges because the support services generally tend to be tailored only towards older people with more common and simpler forms of dementia. The COVID-19 and all the public health restrictions had made it extremely difficult for people who have dementia and their carers to access proper support services in the UK (van Horik, et al 2022).
The pandemic also increased the already existing inequalities to the access of support services, especially for individuals who do not have sufficient digital literacy competencies. It also became difficult for people who did not have proper access to technology. Before COVID-19 the access adventure for services was generally described as a very challenging process. There was a lack of very clear information to support people with dementia and the locating of necessary funds to enable access to healthcare was also very challenging. As a result, the patients are always reliant on unpaid care as I am on an initiative to take proper support which was also removed in the pandemic had arrived. In the COVID-19 pandemic, there were existing inequalities that had increased (Oliver, D., 2021). People who have dementia but are not recognised as vulnerable which means that they are not offered any proper place on the priority list and therefore they could not access additional support. Several support services were also unavailable during the pandemic. The support services generally provided very important opportunities for socialisation and keeping patience with dementia feet. The participants also felt the lack of routine which was negatively impacting the health and well-being of people with dementia including their motivation and their memory (Soto Ruiz de Gordoa, 2019).
There is no proper cure for dementia and there are several medical treatments to reduce the symptoms even though there is nothing in research which is specifically about people with learning disabilities. The public health in England and the practice on dementia suggest the proper ways of supporting people during the time of the pandemic.
Getting a diagnosis is also difficult for some people and there are a lot of shreds of evidence that people from minority ethnic groups or people with young-onset dementia take longer in getting diagnosed properly. The COVID-19 pandemic has increased the inequalities of proper health access for patients with dementia in the UK. The high costs, as well as lack of information about suitable services and facilities, were all status as huge barriers to the access of dementia care both before the pandemic and after the pandemic. One thing which was a huge drawback during the COVID-19 pandemic was that all the daycare centres and respite care or social activities were present in the UK through organisations and councils involved in social contact.
Other Factors Affecting Dementia
The pandemic required the people to stay at home and therefore these support services were of no help. Face-to-face services in the UK started to stop and remote services started to appear at a very slow pace. There are a lot of inequalities in the UK when it comes to dementia and people living with dementia according to the levels of deprivation.
They need to be proper facilities both online and offline to reduce the inequalities which are related to dementia in the UK. The Brighton and Sussex medical school have started to have a national research network to address the critical as well as the fundamental questions about inequalities and the causes following diagnosis of dementia. Their studies will look at the inequalities in the care of dementia and the mean outcomes and what the country can do to improve them. This university will have a unique focus on proper decision making and see how healthcare is founded with people who have dementia and out of this the city of black Arabian in South Asian heritage along with older LGBTQ+ population and the benefits as well as the overall diagnosis of dementia (Oliver, D., 2021).
The main thing that can be recommended for the prevention of inequalities is the fact that the medical schools and universities of the UK have to produce more research related to the diagnosis and the prevention of dementia. The government of the UK also has to provide proper online and offline healthcare facilities for people who have dementia and especially for those people who are from minority ethnic groups. These are the few recommendations and procedures which can start improving the state of dementia support services in the UK and help patients who are suffering from dementia. If the government does not take initiative then the social inequalities cannot be eradicated. People who have dementia deserve the optimal level of medical treatment which they are lacking and this primarily happens because of social inequalities. The social qualities can only be eradicated when people get properly educated about neurological diseases. This education should be given to every person in the society so that if they have a person in their family who has dementia, they can take care of them.
Conclusion
Therefore the social inequalities have to be eradicated and the government of the UK, as well as the healthcare system of the UK, have to concentrate on the proper treatment and care of dementia. The society of the UK needs to be more educated about dementia and the healthcare system also needs to be more aware of how to give the best service to a patient who has dementia. There need to be more research studies about dementia in the UK and only then can the healthcare industry be fully equipped to help a patient who has this condition. The reasons for dementia also have to be properly studied so that it can be prevented at the onset of the diagnosis. They also need to be proper healthcare that can be accessed online because after the pandemic offline services would not be of proper help.
References
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Giebel, C., Sutcliffe, C., Darlington-Pollock, F., Green, M.A., Akpan, A., Dickinson, J., Watson, J. and Gabbay, M., 2021. Health inequities in the care pathways for people living with young-and late-onset dementia: From pre-COVID-19 to early pandemic. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 18(2), p.686.
Mar, J., Arrospide, A., Soto-Gordoa, M., Iruin, Á., Tainta, M., Gabilondo, A., Mar-Barrutia, L., Calvo, M., Mateos, M. and Ibarrondo, O., 2019.
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Oliver, D., 2021. David Oliver: Social care plan furthers inequality and unfairness. BMJ, 374.
Soto Ruiz de Gordoa, M., 2019. Dementia related neuropsychiatric symptoms: inequalities in pharmacological treatment and institutionalization.
van Horik, J.O., Collins, R., Martyr, A., Henderson, C., Jones, R.W., Knapp, M., Quinn, C., Thom, J.M., Victor, C., Clare, L. and IDEAL Programme Team, 2022. Limited receipt of support services among people with mild?to?moderate dementia: Findings from the IDEAL cohort. International Journal of Geriatric Psychiatry, 37(3).
Vestergaard, A.H., Sampson, E.L., Johnsen, S.P. and Petersen, I., 2020. Social inequalities in life expectancy and mortality in people with dementia in the United Kingdom. Alzheimer Disease & Associated Disorders, 34(3), pp.254-261.
Watson, J., Giebel, C., Green, M., Darlington?Pollock, F. and Akpan, A., 2021. Use of routine and cohort data globally in exploring dementia care pathways and inequalities: A systematic review.
Westwood, S., Willis, P., Fish, J., Hafford-Letchfield, T., Semlyen, J., King, A., Beach, B., Almack, K., Kneale, D., Toze, M. and Becares, L., 2020. Older LGBT+ health inequalities in the UK: Setting a research agenda. J Epidemiol Community Health, 74(5), pp.408-411.
Wu, Y.T., Clare, L., Jones, I.R., Martyr, A., Nelis, S.M., Quinn, C., Victor, C.R., Lamont, R.A., Rippon, I., Matthews, F.E. and Improving the experience of Dementia and Enhancing Active Life (IDEAL) study, 2018. Inequalities in living well with dementia—The impact of deprivation on well?being, quality of life and life satisfaction: Results from the improving the experience of dementia and enhancing active life study. International journal of geriatric psychiatry, 33(12), pp.1736-1742.
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