Dementia, public health and public policy – making the connections
| Published date | 16 March 2015 |
| Date | 16 March 2015 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/JPMH-01-2015-0004 |
| Pages | 35-37 |
| Author | Toby Williamson |
| Subject Matter | Health & social care,Mental health,Public mental health |
Dementia, public health and public policy –
making the connections
Toby Williamson
Toby Williamson is Head of
Development and Later Life at
Mental Health Foundation,
London, UK.
Introduction
Public health and dementia have, until recently, rarely been found sharing the same bed either in
academic journals or in public policy discourse. This partly reflects the low profile that dementia
has had in policy debates but even when it has fallen under the spotlight, the focus has been on it
as a neurological condition and the priority has been to find effective treatments or cure.
In the last ten years, however, the landscape has changed significantly and the profile of
dementia has risen dramatically in policy, research and practice terms. Although the link with
public health is still relatively weak a significant development took place in 2014 which perhaps
signals a change on that front. This article examines these developments with a particular focus
on the Blackfriars Consensus on promoting brain health (UK Health Forum & Public Health
England, 2014), as well as briefly considering how other factors influencing health debates may
come to bear on the field of dementia.
Dementia
Dementia is an umbrella term for a variety of organic conditions that affect the brain. Common
symptoms are loss of memory, cognitive impairments, deterioration in motor skills and executive
functions, confusion, and delusions. It is a progressive and terminal condition and there is current ly
no cure or universally effective treatment. An estimated 800,000 people in the UK are believed to
have some formof dementia, the most common ofwhich is Alzheimer’sdisease,affectingaround
62 per cent of people with dementia. Dementia is overwhelmingly an illness of later life and the ris k
of developing dementia increases as one gets older; one in 25 people aged between 70 and 79
have dementiabut this rises to one in sixpeople aged over 80. Two-thirdsof people with dementia
live in theirown homes in the community.With an ageing populationin the UK it is estimated thatby
2021 there will be over a million people with dementia. The cost of dementia to the UK economy is
currently estimated to be £23 billion (Alzheimer’s Society, 2013).
Public policy and dementia
Ten years ago dementia hardly featured in the public policy landscape. It was not mentioned in
the Department of Health’s (1999) National service framework (NSF) for mental health which only
went up to the age of 65. In the 2001 NSF for older people it was only a sub-section in the
chapter on the mental health of older people (Department of Health, 2001). This changed
dramatically in the second half of the decade with several national reports about dementia and in
2009, the publication by the Department of Health (2009) of a national dementia strategy for
England.Scotland, Wales and NorthernIreland have all followedsuit. The change of administration
Received 29 January 2015
Revised 29 January 2015
Accepted 29 January 2015
DOI 10.1108/JPMH-01-2015-0004 VOL. 14 NO. 1 2015, pp. 35-37, © Emerald Group Publishing Limited, ISSN 1746-5729
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JOURNAL OF PUBLIC MENTALHEALTH
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PAG E 35
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