Valeria What is Alzheimer’s and what is its impact?
Alzheimer’s is a neurodegenerative disease, included within complex chronic conditions that are limiting and/or life-threatening; the most common form of dementia, currently representing between 50 and 70% of cases. It is multifactorial, with multiple symptoms that affect cognitive functions, functional capacity, psychological, behavioral and social aspects. 55 million people live with dementia in the world and 60%, according to the World Health Organization, in low- and middle-income countries. Approximately 10 million new cases are diagnosed annually. It is the seventh cause of death and one of the main causes of disability and dependency of older people in the world. The disease affects women disproportionately more than men and in turn it is mostly women who are responsible for both formal and informal care.
Alzheimer’s and other dementias are considered the pandemic of the 21st century. This involves not only the person who suffers from it but also their environment, their caregivers, and carries a cost for the global economy, which is why it is urgent to advocate for national plans that address the disease in a multidisciplinary manner. It is an urgent public health issue.
What is its cause?
We are going through an unprecedented demographic change. The world’s population is increasingly older and will live, as I mentioned, in low- and middle-income countries like Argentina. The life expectancy is longer and science has advanced, communicable diseases have decreased and there has been an increase in chronic diseases, including dementia. There are also familial forms of dementia that appear earlier than at older ages. Given the concern and alarming nature of the situation, the WHO has declared that between 2021 and 2030 will be the decade of healthy aging. The intervention must be collective, from a human rights approach and care focused on the person, family, environment and caregivers. This year’s slogan to raise global awareness among both governments and each individual is: “It is never too early, it is never too late.” Early diagnosis and treatment are essential.
Does music benefit people with Alzheimer’s?
Music does not have beneficial effects in itself, it is an aesthetic process or product, a manifestation of culture, supported by musicality that is the foundation and support of development from the primary stages and throughout life. The first exchanges are bodily sounds. The voice inaugurates us as a species, it is the support of the body and the subsequent seed of the word. “From the beginning, sound language is involved in subjectivizing exchanges. It constitutes them, shapes them and outlines them. It is the material and envelope of the early bond,” colleague Alejandra Giacobone (2018) tells us.
“As subjects inserted in a cultural fabric, the subsequent processes of subjective construction will be in the constitutive exchanges that forge identity, where music will also be an object and founding process as creation, manifestation and aesthetic product.
Musicality forms mnemic traces and those primordial modes and the music object that erected the identity processes, have a concomitant emotion or memory linked.” (Casal Passion, 2019).
Through the sound narrative, a sound or melody that makes up the identity process of each person, we can organize the fragments diluted in memory, access that trace inscribed in early stages or during subsequent development and its adjacent memory. For this reason, sometimes people with Alzheimer’s remember melodies, sounds, and related events or experiences. In this way we can promote language, other cognitive functions, motor, communication and social aspects.
Does music wake up people with Alzheimer’s?
That conceptualization, in my opinion, is erroneous. Alzheimer’s patients are not asleep, they have Alzheimer’s. Music therapy, with its specificity, is a timely intervention. A music therapist is the only professional legally authorized to provide care through expressive and musical sound, addressing the patient in a multidimensional way: promoting their memory, cognition and the necessary guidance to the family member and caregiver.
September is Alzheimer’s month worldwide. Do you have any activities scheduled?
Yes, on Monday, September 25 at 6:30 p.m. we will be offering a free discussion, aimed at family members, caregivers, professionals and anyone interested.
How can they contact your patients and families?
Through our website: www.saludenlazos.com.ar
And our Instagram: @red_de_salud_enlazos
by CEDOC