Frequently Asked Questions

Many of your questions will be answered in education and information pieces on the PSW Corner. However, these are some questions we hear often so we will answer them now.

What is the difference between Alzheimer’s disease and dementia?
Alzheimer’s disease is an actual disease which involves physical changes in the brain. When the brain of a person with Alzheimer’s disease is autopsied after death, one can see the plaques and tangles in the brain. These plaques and tangles cause the nerve cells or neurons to die.

Dementia is a group of symptoms including loss of memory, judgment and reasoning, and changes in mood, behaviour and communication abilities that are associated with a number of different conditions and diseases including Alzheimer’s disease.

What is a PEC (Public Education Coordinator)?
A PEC is someone who works for a local chapter of the Alzheimer Society in Ontario. The job of a PEC is to increase awareness and understanding of Alzheimer’s disease and related dementias and to train individuals who care for people with dementia. The role of the PEC may vary slightly depending on the needs of the chapter.

I wanted to ask about one of my clients. She seems to be very depressed. How do I figure out if it is depression or part of her dementia? She is hard to get out of bed and she never wants to do anything.
Once you do help your client out of bed and get her involved in something, does she enjoy herself? One of the losses associated with dementia is apathy. An individual looses initiative and may spend a lot of time sitting in a chair or in bed and doing nothing. It is necessary to give this person lots of encouragement and help him/her by being the motivation that has been lost.

It is also possible that your client does have depression which is a mental disorder or illness characterized by an all-encompassing low mood, low self-esteem, and loss of interest or pleasure in normally enjoyable activities. Depression is considered “clinical” or “major” when these moods and feelings last for more than two weeks and are interfering with an individual’s daily life. It can be challenging to recognize depression in a person with dementia because some of the symptoms can look like some of the symptoms accompanying dementia. Research has shown that many people with dementia and depression respond well to treatment for depression. Encourage you client or his/her family or caregivers to seek a medical assessment for depression by a qualified physician.

Why do some of my residents hide food under their pillow or mattress?
It is not uncommon for people with dementia to collect things and/or hide them. This is called hoarding. This behaviour can be very perplexing especially when the items that are being hoarded are food or other perishables. It is possible that your residents are hiding food because of experiences they have had in the past. Look at the backgrounds of these residents. Their age can tell you if they lived through the depression era when many people did not have much food to eat. It is also possible that one or more of these individuals immigrated from countries and situations where there were food shortages. Remember that as more recent memories fade, individuals with dementia will try to make sense out of their present circumstances by using memories from the past. Thus, the survivor of a concentration camp will see food on the table today and remember hunger from the time in the camp and hide the food for when they are hungry later.

If you have questions or comments about your work as a professional caregiver of persons with dementia, please contact pec@alzheimertoronto.org. We will reprint relevant feedback on the Frequently Asked Questions page on the PSW Corner