Dementia help

The government's advisor on dementia, Professor Alistair Burns, joined us for a live webchat on Monday 2 April to discuss dementia. It's the disease that over 55s most fear - and not just for ourselves, but for our families. About 400,000 people have the condition but have not been diagnosed.

How to respond when someone gets a diagnosis? What can you expect? What steps can you take to cope? 

The Prime Minister has pointed out that a quarter of all hospital beds are occupied by someone with dementia and that the cost of the disease is around £19 billion a year - which is more than the cost of cancer, heart disease or stroke.

David Cameron says: "We’ve got to treat this like the national crisis it is. We need an all-out fight-back against this disease; one that cuts across society.

“We did it with cancer in the 70s. With HIV in the 80s and 90s. We fought the stigma, stepped up to the challenge and made massive in-roads into fighting these killers. Now we’ve got to do the same with dementia.”

The government has pledged to:

• double spending on dementia research
• improve dementia care
• increase public understanding
• make communities more dementia-friendly

This follows a new report from the Alzheimer's Society which found:

• 75% of the public don't think society is geared up to deal with dementia
• 61% of people with dementia feel lonely
• 44% of people with dementia lost friends after their diagnosis
• 45% felt a burden to their family
• 77% felt anxious or depressed

The Alzheimer's Society has lunched the dementia-friendly communities programme to give public recognition to villages, towns, cities and organisations that are improving their inclusiveness of people with dementia.

Other things you might like:

• Join our dementia webchat with the Department of health's advisor on dementia, Prof. Alistair Burns.
• Read our guest blog from a man whose wife was diagnosed with dementia.
• Catch up with  our webchat with Paul Burstow, Minister of State for Care Services.