Alzheimer's Disease: Caregiving, Risk Factors, and Treatment
This paper examines Alzheimer's disease as a progressive cognitive disorder, drawing on peer-reviewed literature and a case study of an 85-year-old female patient. It covers the neurological severity of the disease, key risk factors including age and gender, and the role of skilled caregivers in managing behavioral symptoms. The paper discusses treatment approaches — including low-dose medications such as Namenda and Aricept — and explores the ethically complex caregiver strategy of therapeutic deception. It also addresses how early symptoms affect families and how professional care facilities respond to advancing dementia, concluding that skilled caregiving is essential to patient well-being.
- Introduction to Alzheimer's Disease: Overview of Alzheimer's as progressive cognitive disorder
- Severity of the Disorder: Brain cell death causes memory loss and dysfunction
- Risk Factors for Alzheimer's Disease: Age, gender, environment, and education as risk factors
- Managing Alzheimer's: The Role of Skilled Caregivers: Defining skilled caregiving through knowledge and interventions
- Treatment, Therapies, and Level of Success: Medication and deception strategies used in patient care
- Family and Caregiver Impact: Family response to early symptoms and professional care
- Conclusion: Skilled caregiving is essential for Alzheimer's patients
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What makes this paper effective
- Grounds abstract clinical concepts in a concrete case study, making the progression of Alzheimer's tangible and relatable for readers.
- Draws on peer-reviewed sources across multiple journals (Aging & Mental Health, Journal of Social Work Practice, Neurological Science) to support each thematic section.
- Addresses an ethically nuanced caregiving strategy — therapeutic deception — without editorializing, presenting it as documented clinical practice.
Key academic technique demonstrated
The paper uses a case-study framework to organize literature review findings around a single patient's experience. Each section introduces a concept (e.g., risk factors, skilled caregiving) and immediately applies it to the case, demonstrating how to move between general research evidence and specific individual examples — a core skill in health and social work writing.
Structure breakdown
The paper follows a thematic structure: a brief introduction establishes the disease and subject; subsequent sections move through severity, risk factors, caregiving approaches, treatment outcomes, and family response; a short conclusion synthesizes the key argument. Each section is self-contained yet contributes to a cumulative understanding of how Alzheimer's affects patients, families, and caregivers alike.
Introduction to Alzheimer's Disease
This paper examines the challenges a female Alzheimer's patient endures as a result of her disease. Alzheimer's disease is a progressive cognitive disorder that destroys a person's memory and impairs other functions that a healthy individual would ordinarily expect to perform each day. This paper draws on available literature to present information about the disease and references the case of an individual patient suffering from Alzheimer's throughout.
Severity of the Disorder
Alzheimer's caused many of the patient's brain cells to "degenerate and die," which led to severe memory loss and the dysfunction of many of her mental abilities. A person with Alzheimer's often feels lost, confused, and incompetent (Mayo Clinic, 2009).
Risk Factors for Alzheimer's Disease
The most common risk factor associated with Alzheimer's disease is age. Advancing age brings with it an increased chance of developing the disease. An estimated ten percent of people beyond the age of 65 currently have Alzheimer's, and up to 50% of those older than 85 years of age are affected by the disease (WebMD, 2011). The patient discussed in this paper is 85 years old, placing her squarely within the highest-risk age group.
Additional risk factors include the following:
a) Women are more likely to develop the disease than men. b) People who have experienced Down syndrome are potential candidates for Alzheimer's. c) Head injuries can sometimes lead to Alzheimer's. d) Certain environmental toxins may cause the disease when a person is exposed over time — constant exposure to aluminum, for example, has been cited as a potential contributing factor. e) Although not fully understood, people who lack formal education appear to face an increased risk of Alzheimer's (WebMD, 2011).
Managing Alzheimer's: The Role of Skilled Caregivers
A peer-reviewed article in the journal Aging & Mental Health suggests that managing Alzheimer's requires, first and foremost, a skilled caregiver. There are three ways to distinguish a skilled caregiver from less skilled ones: a) being highly knowledgeable about the effects Alzheimer's has on the individual; b) receiving both formal and informal support from healthcare professionals; and c) utilizing a broad repertoire of interventions while being familiar with "the complex and creative processes underlying care" (Farran et al., 2011).
Conclusion
The symptoms that an Alzheimer's patient experiences seriously impact the entire family. The best strategy, therefore, is for families to engage a competent, skilled caregiver to manage their family member's condition. One approach employed by caregivers in this case was therapeutic deception — lying to the patient as an intervention — because attempting to be straightforward with someone who has lost contact with reality is not an effective care strategy. As the literature consistently shows, skilled, compassionate caregiving remains central to improving quality of life for Alzheimer's patients and reducing burden on their families.
References
Alter, T. (2012). The growth of institutional deception in the treatment of Alzheimer's disease: The case study of [patient]. Journal of Social Work Practice, 26(1), 93–107.
Farran, C. J., Fogg, L. G., McCann, J. J., Etkin, C., Dong, Z., & Barnes, L. L. (2011). Assessing family caregiver skill in managing behavioral symptoms of Alzheimer's disease. Aging & Mental Health, 15(4), 510–521.
Mayo Clinic. (2009). Diseases and conditions: Alzheimer's disease. Retrieved January 22, 2015, from http://www.mayoclinic.org
Raudino, F. (2013). Non-cognitive symptoms and related conditions in Alzheimer's disease: A literature review. Neurological Science, 34, 1275–1282.
WebMD. (2011). Risk factors for Alzheimer's disease. Retrieved January 22, 2015, from http://www.webmd.com
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