You are surrounded by a number of diseases in the world today. A lot more attention is paid to a lot of other diseases which were neglected once upon a time. Mental health is being discussed in a very proper manner and any diseases related to this field even remotely are not being passed off as untreatable. Strong research is going on in this field to identify the causes, treatment options and ways to provide techniques to prevent these diseases. A lot still has to be explored, discovered, invented and even simply understood. But there definitely has been a lot of progress and a lot that has unfolded in the past few years. One such condition which is being studied upon currently is dementia. This particular condition cannot exactly be called a specific disease. Dementia can be taken to be describing a set of symptoms which further cause trouble with memory, social abilities and thinking so much so that it may cause problems with your everyday functioning. While as a part of this condition, one would mostly experience memory loss, memory loss alone cannot be called dementia.

Dementia can be caused due to a lot of different factors and depending on the factor which causes dementia, the symptoms would usually vary. However, the most common symptoms can be divided into psychological and cognitive changes. Under the first class of symptoms, people affected by the condition of dementia might experience paranoia, anxiety, depression, agitation, personality changes, might show inappropriate behavior, and have hallucinations. Under the second class of symptoms, the patients with dementia might be dealing with memory loss, and find difficulty in handling complex work, in being able to organize and plan something, finding difficulty with coordination and motor functions, in communication, constantly being at a loss of words, difficulty in forming proper reasons and finding logical solutions, disorientation and confusion.

Dementia is caused by nerve damage in the brain and this could be any part of the brain. Dementia could affect different people in different manners on the basis of the part of the brain that is affected. The classification of this condition is usually done either by the part of the brain that is affected or by their progression with time. Some types of dementia which progress continuously and cannot be reversed are Alzheimer’s disease (which is the most common type of dementia), vascular dementia (second most common type of dementia. Caused by damage to blood vessels carrying blood to the brain), lewy body dementia (In this condition, clumps of proteins are formed in the brains called lewy bodies), frontotemporal dementia (The nerves present in the frontal lobe and the temporal lobe of the brain undergo damage in this type of dementia and cause problems with language, personality, and behavior) and mixed dementia (this type of dementia is a combination of Alzheimer’s disease, lewy body dementia, and vascular dementia). Studies are being carried out in order to understand how the symptoms and treatments differ for various conditions.