the.com/dementia
Dementia gradually erodes memory and thinking, slowly changing how people recognize their own lives and loved ones.
means A progressive decline in memory, thinking, and reasoning severe enough to interfere with daily life.
from From Latin dementia, 'madness' or 'being out of one's mind' — built from de- ('away from') plus mens ('mind'), the same root that gives us 'mental.' So the word has literally always meant 'away from mind.' It entered medical use in the 18th and 19th centuries as physicians borrowed the Latin term to describe cognitive decline, gradually narrowing from a general word for madness or insanity into the specific clinical sense we use today — mind slipping away rather than mind gone awry.
- not one disease
- umbrella term, Alzheimer's is just the most famous cause
- first to go
- recent memories vanish before decades-old ones do
- sense of humor
- personality and emotional memory often outlast facts and names