Page 983 - Week 04 - Wednesday, 21 April 2021
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I am proud to bring forth this motion in the Legislative Assembly today, because dementia is a harrowing, debilitating disease that too many people suffer from. If anyone suffers from it, it is too many. It is a term used to cover a range of different conditions that may be similar. They are characterised by a gradual impairment of brain function. Changes due to dementia can affect your behaviour, memory, speech, thought, mobility and personality. Health and functional ability can decline as the disease progresses in a person.
The early signs of dementia are very subtle and vague and may not be immediately obvious to people. Some common symptoms may include progressive and frequent memory loss, confusion, personality change, apathy and withdrawal, and a loss of ability to perform everyday tasks. Dementia is the second leading cause of death in Australia, with coronary heart disease being the leading cause. Dementia is the leading cause of death in women.
In 2021 there were an estimated 472,000 Australians living with dementia. Without some sort of medical breakthrough, the number of people with dementia is expected to increase to over a million by 2058. Currently, an estimated 250 people are joining the population with dementia every day. That is a further 250 people diagnosed with dementia every day. An average of 16 people died per day where dementia was the underlying cause of death.
We do not talk enough about dementia, Mr Assistant Speaker. There is still a bit of a stigma about it, because people seem like they are no longer the same person. They can appear angry. They can appear deceptive. They might not seem like the same person, but they still are. We need to talk more about dementia. It is here. It is our families. It is our friends. It may be our parents, our grandparents, our neighbours or our neighbours’ parents or grandparents. It is in our community.
We are lucky that we are seeing more aged-care and retirement places with dementia-specific facilities. I do not want to upset anyone, but I do not mean those places where people with dementia may be sat in a chair in front of a TV all day and pretty much left there. Many places are emerging that are best practice examples of dementia care. This is what we must encourage in our community. Of course, not every person with dementia wants to live in aged care or a retirement home. Many people want to stay at home with their loved ones.
Just as importantly, their loved ones want the person with dementia to stay at home with them. They want to give them the love and care that they may have been sharing with them for 50 years or more—or less, in some cases. They are trying their best to stay at home. It is only natural that people with dementia will want to live as normal a life as possible. Depending on the individual and the stage of their dementia, they may have many days where their health, behaviour and thought processes are as they had always been. They may have the occasional bad day. Sadly, as the condition progresses those bad days can increase in frequency.
For those people, especially those still living at home, we need to make Canberra as dementia friendly as possible so that people can live independently and that family
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