Dr. Christopher Frank, of Kingston, Ontario, particularly appreciates the caregiver’s role—after all, he focuses on areas where caregivers provide crucial help, such as geriatric rehabilitation, acute care consultation and palliative care. In this guest blog, Dr. Frank shares five pieces of inspirational advice from one of his patient’s relatives, a caregiver herself.
The last Wednesday of January is Bell Let’s Talk Day, an initiative to encourage conversations, increase awareness and end the stigma around mental illness. One aspect of the conversation that’s not often talked about is mental health among older adults and seniors, and how this intersects with dementia. So today, let’s talk about it. Here are five things you should know about dementia, mental illness and mental health: 1) Dementia caregivers experience higher rates of depression than all other caregivers….
We all know that a healthy lifestyle is important for reducing our risk of dementia and many other chronic diseases. But did you know that it’s equally important for people who already have a diagnosis of dementia? Research shows that lifestyle choices such as healthy eating, staying social, challenging your brain and being physically active can improve quality of life, may help to slow the progression of the disease and can improve your capacity to cope with some of the…
Life can change direction drastically when a family member or close friend is diagnosed with a chronic health condition like Alzheimer’s disease, another form of dementia, multiple sclerosis, or Parkinson’s disease. Your suspicions that something is wrong have been confirmed; now, you have to figure out how to support the person. You may have never had personal experience with any of these conditions. Suddenly, you find yourself going along to doctor’s appointments and feeling as if the doctor is speaking…
Pauline Tardif was appointed the new CEO of the Alzheimer Society of Canada on March 20, 2017. We recently sat down with Pauline to learn more about her background, her goals for the Alzheimer Society, and her life outside of work.