Dementia Awareness Week

This year the week is aimed at informing people who believe they may have memory problems to seek information and help.  

For those who are worried about their memory or that of someone else’s the “Worried about your memory?” booklet provides information about memory problems and what you should do if you think you are experiencing memory problems.   

You can download a copy of the Worried about your memory? booklet here.

Professor John Breitner Australian Tour 19 – 26 September.

Early diagnosis of dementia: Can we and should we?

Alzheimer’s Australia’s overseas guest speaker for Dementia awareness Week 2011 is Professor John Breitner (he has replaced Professor Ronald Petersen who is unable to visit Australia due to illness).  

Professor Breitner is a geriatric psychiatrist and epidemiologist who has devoted his career to Alzheimer’s disease (AD), its risk factors and their implications for its prevention. He has worked extensively in diagnosis and treatment of patients with dementia but is better known as a researcher. His work began with studies on familial aggregation in AD and evolved to twin studies of heritability and environmental risk factors.  He then founded the Cache County Study of Memory in Aging, a longitudinal investigation of genetic and environmental antecedents of AD, which has produced over 100 scientific papers.  More recently he has been Chair of the Alzheimer’s Disease Anti-inflammatory Prevention Trial (ADAPT), a randomized controlled trial to evaluate nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs as agents for the primary prevention of AD in healthy elderly people.   

Professor Breitner is the Canada Research Chair in Prevention of Dementia, Director for the  Centre for Studies on Prevention of Alzheimer's Disease and Douglas Mental Health University Institute Research Centre. He is also Professor of Psychiatry at the McGill University Faculty of Medicine.  

The theme of Professor Breitner’s talk will be: Early Diagnosis of Dementia: Can We and Should We? Professor Breitner will cover the following issues:           

•  An overview of what research tells us about the progression of MCI/dementia  and those at risk including the likelihood of progression from MCI to dementia        
• Strategies for identifying those at risk or those in the earliest stages of the disease – how close are we? If we could detect dementia at its earliest stages what would this mean for research on interventions and treatment?        
• A view about the possibilities for modifying progression and in what timescale.         
• What are the implications in terms of the need for short term action around dementia risk reduction, enhancing the diagnostic skills of the GPs, medication trials, investment in research?  

Schedule

Monday 19 September 
Melbourne

Tuesday 20 September
Adelaide – please contact the Hobart Office

Wednesday 21 September
Canberra

Thursday 22 September 
Brisbane

Friday 26 September 
Sydney