What kinds of dementia are there?—a very quick guide
This is a question that gets asked a lot.
I used to say five main ones, then I said five main ones and some rare ones. Now I don’t even try to list them. The combination of symptoms when people have neurodegeneration is so complex that some people even think that the word “dementia” is not as useful as it used to be. To be really inclusive it would be called progressive neurodegeneration.
But let’s not get too advanced. Most people who ask want to know this –
Alzheimers disease is the most common, and is usually age related, though some types have an earlier onset, including the type affecting people with Downs syndrome, or the inherited type
Vascular disease is the second most common, and often associated with other vascular problems like stroke or high blood pressure
Lewy Body disease may have slightly different symptoms, involving hallucinations and is sometimes associated with Parkinson’s disease
Frontotemporal dementia can often be recognised by the changes in the personality, which may become rude and difficult
Alcohol related dementia is what it says on the tin and is tragic because it is brain damage that could have been prevented
Chronic traumatic encephalopathy is the dementia caused by repeated head trauma, for example in contact sport – again preventable
HIV related dementia can develop in people with this virus that attacks brain cells, and rare in places where HIV therapy is available
Childhood dementia is how we describe the progressive brain damage in children with some rare genetic disorders
Rare Dementia Support is a website with amazing support resources for people with rarer forms of dementia.
There is another unusual form of dementia that is diagnosed in people who have clear symptoms but they do not get worse. This is sometimes caused by Functional Neurological Disorder, and in many cases distress is caused by other people questioning the diagnosis as if the disability is not real. On the other hand, pairing it with the progressive neurodegeneration syndromes and talking as if it’s the same risks giving people with the ordinary kind of dementia a false notion of what to expect. It’s complicated.
