Among other serious public health issues, China is facing the challenge of having to care for increasing numbers of dementia patients. This is due, to a large extent, to a parallel increase in ageing patients. While life expectancy was 45 in 1960, it is 77 now. One person in six is over 60 now, and by 2025 one in four will be. Despite the fact that China has now 9 million people with some form of dementia, the government is not yet prepared to deal effectively with this situation.
Dementia covers a broad category of brain diseases that cause a long term and frequently gradual decrease in the ability to think and remember daily life incidents, and it affects people from all social and economic conditions. The first signs and symptoms of the disease may be subtle. However, later on, language, emotional problems and a decrease in motivation appear as additional symptoms of this troubling condition.
Dementia has been mentioned in medical texts since antiquity. In the 7th century B.C., Pythagoras, the Greek philosopher and mathematician, describes the “senium” period of mental and physical decay in the years after the age of 73 years old. Aristotle and Plato also spoke of mental decay in advanced age, and viewed it as an inevitable process that affected old men and women that couldn’t be prevented.
Old Chinese medical texts also mention this deterioration of the intellectual faculties as the age of the “foolish old person.” Byzantine physicians also wrote about dementia, and mentioned at least seven emperors older than 70 who displayed signs of cognitive decline. In Hamlet and King Lear, Shakespeare mentions the loss of mental function in old age.
Before the 20th century, dementia was relatively rare, because a long lifespan was uncommon in preindustrial times. Following WWII, however, there was an increase in life expectancy, and the number of people over 65 in developed countries started to increase rapidly, and so did dementia.
