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I work for some years as a psychologist and one question I receive many times is what is the difference between Dementia and Alzheimers.  This is not a bad question as most people to who you will ask this question will not be able to answer it wright. Many people who are diagnosed with Dementia syndrome probably think they have Alzheimers disease. However, this is not always true as there is a difference between Dementia and Alzheimer’s which  will try to explain in this article. Dementia is an ongoing problem and in a few years it will be a huge social problem as the average age of people in the Western world is increasing and with that, so is Dementia. Dementia is not a disease itself, it is a syndrome and that is best explained as to say it is a collection of symptoms.

As stated, Dementia is a syndrome and not a disease on itself. A syndrome is a collection of possible symptoms that together make a syndrome. For instance, Demented people could have symptoms of Amnesia, Apraxia, Apraxia of speech, behavior problems, speach impairment, orientation problems and many more. Off course one does not need to have all these symptoms to qualify for Dementia or Alzheimers. The official rule is that one needs to have Amnesia and one significant other sympton to qualify for Alzheimer disease. However, this can be different for other types of Dementia.

So what is the difference between Dementia and Alzheimers? To state that clearly, Dementia is a syndrome and Alzheimers is a disease. Dementia itself is not the disease, it is just the name for the state of mind the peope are in. Dementia is a greek word ant it means ‘deprivation of mind’. You are loosing the person that you always have been.

As stated before, Alzheimer disease is the most well known type of dementa. The most important reason for this is that 70% of all people diagnosed with Dementia syndrome has Alzheimer disease. A significant 30% others don’t qualify for this diagnosis. There is also a lot of research about Alzheimer disease and this comes into the media and these are probably two good reasons why Alzheimer is known so well and everyone thinks Alzheimer and Dementia are the same.

So I have tried to explain in this article what is the difference between Dementia and Alzheimers disease. In short I can say that there are many types of Dementia and Alzheimers is just one of them. So when you have a relative or a friend diagnosed with Dementia it has not always have to be Alzheimer disease. There is a big chance that he has (70%) but also a 30% chance that it is another type of Dementia.