It is hard for the elderly to take care of themselves because they may not remember doing something and it could be very dangerous to their environment. Although dementia can be dealt with through interactive therapies and a variety of treatments, it can still be life threatening at times. .
There are two main factors that are associated with dementia, Alzheimer's disease and cerebrovascular disease. Alzheimer's disease affects the cerebral cortex in 50- 60 percent of dementia patients (Hynd 435). It is also know as senile dementia that is caused by a tumor or the growth that presses against brain tissues. It can also be caused by nutritional deficiencies by poisoning of alcohol or many different toxic substances. Lastly, it can be caused by a severe physical injury where brain damage has occurred (Jacoby 395). It is the loss of short-term and long-term memory. Long-term (secondary memory) is a something that has to be remembered over a period of time and then retold at a later date. There is a type of long-term memory that relates to meanings of words and their relationships, which is known as semantic memory. It usually affects people suffering from cortical dementia. Fronto-temperal dementia is when people have very severe language problems. Then there is episodic memory when people can determine long-term memories but not short-term memories. Short-term memories refer to information that is stored only for a few seconds and then can be retold at that moment, but not remembered over a long period of time. It applies to subcortia and cortical dementia (Benedict 111). When Alzheimer's disease has taken over someone's mind, they tend to get depressed, which complicates the difficulty in remembering things. There is also cerebrovascular disease, also known as multiinfarct dementia, which is the disrupting of the blood flow to brain cells. "If blood cells in the brain are blocked, blood flow in constructed" (Benedict 110).