Dementia is a general term for a decline in mental ability severe enough to interfere with daily life. Memory loss is an example. Alzheimer’s disease is the most common type of dementia.
Dementia is not a specific disease. It’s an overall term that describes a wide range of symptoms associated with a decline in memory or other thinking skills severe enough to reduce a person’s ability to perform everyday activities. Alzheimer’s disease accounts for 60 to 80 percent of cases of dementia.
Dementia is caused by damage to brain cells. This damage interferes with the ability of brain cells to communicate with each other. When brain cells cannot communicate normally, thinking, behavior and feelings can be affected.
Symptoms of Dementia and Alzheimer’s
Dementia is a collection of symptoms that can be caused by various diseases. Dementia symptoms include impairments in thinking, communicating, and memory. The following are some of the common symptom of dementia:
- Cognitive: memory loss, mental decline, confusion in the evening hours, disorientation, inability to speak or understand, making things up, mental confusion, or inability to recognize common things
- Behavioral: irritability, personality changes, restlessness, lack of restraint, or wandering and getting lost
- Muscular: inability to combine muscle movements or unsteady walking
- Mood: anxiety, loneliness, mood swings, or nervousness
- Psychological: depression, hallucination, or paranoia
- Also common: falling or jumbled speech
Films With Dementia and Alzheimer’s
There have been many movies with characters with dementia and/or Alzheimer’s diseae. The following films contain a character that depicts the condition in a realistic manner. Each film also provides a foundation for a good Cinema Therapy experience due to directorial style, character development, casting, and production quality. New releases will be added to the list below so return if this topic is of interest to you.
- On Golden Pond (1981)
- Driving Miss Daisy (1989)
- Mars Attacks! (1996)
- Iris (2001)
- A Time to Remember (2003)
- The Notebook (2004)
- Black (2005)
- Thanmatra (2005)
- Away from Her (2006)
- Lovely, Still (2008)
- Before We Forget (2011)
- The Iron Lady (2011)
- Rise of the Planet of the Apes (2011)
- A Separation (2011)
- Terri (2011)
- Wrinkles (2011)
- Amour (2012)
- Robot and Frank (2012)
- Nebraska (2013)
- Still Alice (2014)