Blog: The Brain Dialogues, filtered by tag: Book Review

PROFESSOR DAVID AMES A geriatrician, a psychiatrist and a nurse (no this isn't the start of a joke!) have written a useful review outlining what is known about nine medical conditions that occur more often in people with dementia (PWD) than in other people. These syndromes are falls, delirium, epilepsy, weight loss and nutritional disorders, incontinence, sleep disturbance, visual dysfunction, oral disease and frailty. After an introductory chapter, nine further chapters outline published evidence about dementia and these nine co-morbidities. The writing is clear and concise and, as the… Read More

HEIDI DOUGLASS | h.douglass@unsw.edu.au Historically, none of us have particularly looked forward to growing 'old'. If you ask a wide demographic to define the word 'ageing', a range of pessimistic viewpoints will filter in, such as loss of independence, burden to others, physical incapability, loneliness, hip replacements, dementia and loss of dignity. It seems that, for many people, the path to ageing appears to be a steep decline into misery. A predominant reason for this is that age catches us by surprise. We're unprepared. We've been happily going about our business of day to day life… Read More

HEIDI DOUGLASS | h.douglass@unsw.edu.au Since the 4th century BC, when Hippocrates first theorised that physiological abnormalities may be the root of mental disorders, psychiatry and the mysteries of the brain have come a long way. However, it has been a slow development. It wasn’t until 250 BC that Greek anatomist, Erasistratus, studied the brain and distinguished the cerebrum from the cerebellum, and then not until the year 1808, over twenty centuries later, that Johann Reil, the German physician, anatomist and psychiatrist coined the term ‘psychiatry’. Fast forward another two thousand… Read More