A dementia diagnosis can be a gateway for treatment and better care and support, but this does not always happen. In India, where only 10% of the families receive a diagnosis and this, too, happens usually later in the dementia, we need to understand diagnosis experiences better if we want to improve diagnosis-related experiences.
This presentation looks at how caregivers in India perceive dementia symptoms, obtain diagnosis, and understand and respond to the diagnosis. Experiences of several caregivers are used to understand what makes families seek medical help and look at barriers and hesitations that delay diagnosis, or delay the families from benefiting from the diagnosis. Areas where we can reconsider our dementia awareness and diagnosis approach to improve diagnosis experiences are discussed.
This presentation was made at the International Symposium on Dementia and 22nd Annual Conference of ARDSI (Alzheimer’s and Related Disorders Society of India), held at the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore (India) on September 14 to 16, 2018.