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The Tokyo Metropolitan Government (TMG) has taken many proactive measures to deal with the challenge of dementia, adding the release of its Tokyo Navi website, which serves as a data cleaning house. September 17, 2024, in commemoration of World Alzheimer’s Day on September 21.
The day’s program featured discussions held through specialists in the field, as well as the lunch served as a grace of the error orders, whose team includes other people living with the condition.
The panel of the Japanese-based symposia was joined by Dr. S. Katarina Nagga, professor of geriatric medicine at Linkoping University Sweden. A physician and researcher in the box connected to dementia, Nagga is also a founding member of a Swedish program introduced in 2010 to meet the demanding situations of BPSD (behavioral and mental symptoms of dementia). The team introduced a manager to patient care and in the end it lessens those symptoms.
When other people with dementia are not capable of their needs, Nagga explained, they would possibly expand the symptoms of irritability, anxiety or restlessness as a means of self -expression. The BPSD technique implements the tests to identify these needs is that it may be difficult to stumble upon the presence of physical pain if the individual cannot verbally. In such cases, the program encourages the use of a score scale not based on communication, which can attend the presence of pain by identifying express expressions or frame movements.
The BPSD program was subsequently implemented in Japan, and the symposium provided an opportunity for the Swedish and Japanese BPSD research teams to re-touch base with each other’s work.
Nagga praised TMG’s efforts to increase information and awareness among citizens about the condition, noting that dementia remains both underdiagnosed and undertreated worldwide.
By adapting the Swedish BPSD style for use in Japan, Nagga discovered that other people with dementia in the two countries percentage of non -unusual needs. Early detection is crucial, he said, since other older people living alone are less probably to recognize the first symptoms of the disease and seek diagnosis or treatment. In Sweden, many other people with serious dementia are admitted in care institutions, while in Japan, house care is no more unusual. Nagga firmly supports the progression of care systems that other people with dementia receive adequate care in the house.
Dementia treatment, Nagga remarks, should not be limited to medical interventions. Instead, she argues that other approaches—such as making adjustments to the living environment and focusing on communication-related needs—should be considered for addressing behavioral and psychological symptoms.
“Pharmaceutical remedies can be reduced through other interventions, such as physiotherapy or the integration of more physical movements in their daily activities to the ability to participate in daily activities of relatives,” he observed, and added that it is vital to talk about the characteristics about the characteristics To be he had with the user and his circle of relatives members at an early level of the condition to ensure that his wishes are respected.
The BPSD program at any time be founded on a clinical technique and founded on evidence, said Nagga, highlighting the want to paintings as a team, who may just come with nurses, doctors and physical therapists, where everyone is on board to glance for the patient of other angles whilst running toward the same objectives focused on treatment.
Joining Nagga as a symposium panelist was Dr. Miharu Nakanishi, an Associate Professor at the Tohoku University Graduate School of Medicine, who noted that the main players for addressing dementia in Japan are care workers.
“Those who care for others with dementia face isolation and loneliness,” Nakanishi said. “It is vital for them to know that they are not alone, because the same demanding situations are also faced by other countries. This can be very encouraging for them. “
“Sweden’s BPSD style can take care of Japan’s confidence to use non-medical and non-pharmacological methods for dementia care,” he added.
Her colleague Dr. Atsushi Nishida, visiting professor at the University of Tokyo and director of the Tokyo Metropolitan Institute of Medical Science’s Research Center for Social Science & Medicine, also noted that in the past, people with dementia in Japan and elsewhere who expressed symptoms were often given antipsychotic medications, which increased the risk for cardiovascular disease and early mortality.
“At that time, the symptoms were only taken into account, however, today we perceive that the deep reasons for these symptoms were, in fact, the dissatisfied desires,” he added, echoing Nagga. “We will have to aim to meet those wishes through non -medical strategies, which requires a replacement for perspective. “
“Age is the greatest threat to dementia, and if the condition is rarely addressed long before it moves to a complex stage, it becomes very difficult to treat, and it is too late,” Nagga reiterated.
Prior to the start of the symposium, a group of TMG officials sat down for lunch in the building’s 32nd-floor cafeteria.
Scurrying around the room, taking and delivering orders, were servers with the Restaurant of Mistaken Orders, a program for people living with dementia. Whenever the servers appeared confused, a team of supporters was on hand to help direct them toward the correct table or offer words of encouragement.
The program’s philosophy is that food orders may or may not be delivered correctly, and it aims to cultivate an atmosphere of friendliness wherein such errors are met with understanding and simply laughed off.
“Too often, other people who live with the condition only need to surrender, and I wanted them to know that it is not necessary,” says the program director, Yukio Wada.
He notes that it is of course a faster and more efficient process for meals to be prepared, but that by putting those with dementia in charge of the task, they can feel more in control of their own lives.
The restaurant logo is a mouth with your tongue standing out, which Wada says that it is a world -identified facial expression that shows after someone has made a mistake, perfectly encapsulating the cheerful spirit of the program.
“I believe that dementia should be approached from the perspective of human rights rather than the matter of providing care,” Wada observes. “It is our mission to help create a society where all people can live with human dignity up until the end of their lives.”
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