Early Diagnosis of Alzheimer’s Disease, Caregiving, and Family Dynamics

Abstract

(from the chapter) With the aging of society, Alzheimer's disease (AD) poses a potential public health crisis. This potential crisis has spurred research on making an early diagnosis of AD. Progress has been made in identifying AD risk factors, including those involving genetics. This progress has led to hope that prevention models might work in AD as they have in cancer and heart disease. These trends offer exciting new directions in AD research. However, the potential impact of these trends on AD caregivers has received little consideration. The goal of this chapter is to explore the potential impact of early diagnosis, advances in genetics, and prevention models on AD caregivers. An examination of what is currently known in these areas will be followed by discussion of the research, education, practice, and policy needs these trends have created. Finally, we will speculate about future directions in AD caregiving that may result from early diagnosis and prevention efforts. Throughout this chapter, the term families will be used for convenience. It is recognized that caregiver systems often include people other than family, such as friends and neighbors. In most contexts of this chapter, the term families is meant to include these other caregivers as well. Also, throughout this chapter we will move between the terms early diagnosis and prevention. These concepts are related but not identical. Early detection involves identifying people who show the earliest detectable signs of the disease. Prevention involves intervening with people at risk of AD but showing no signs of the disease. As technology improves, this boundary can become less distinct. For example, some might view the intervention on behalf of people who have Mild Cognitive Impairment (MCI) as prevention if these people do not go on to display dementia. However, in this chapter we ascribe this activity to early detection since persons with MCI have a detectable sign of disease. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2013 APA, all rights reserved)