In the long run,
the facts are on the side of the optimists.
To paraphrase Martin Luther King Jr., the arc of history bends toward progress. But progress doesn't just happen. People work hard to discover ways forward.
The What Works Initiative
highlights positive outcomes on difficult issues – and how people achieved them.
If the fear and burden of dementia feel ever more present in recent years, you haven’t lost your mind. The number of dementia cases around the world has risen roughly two and a half times since 1990.
But that’s not the story here. Consider that the number of people over the age of 80 has tripled or quadrupled over that time. The imposition of dementia on any given individual or family at any given age is falling steadily and fairly rapidly.
One recent study found that the incidence of dementia per person by age in the US has fallen by two thirds in the past 40 years – from 3 in 10 Americans between ages 85 and 89 down to 1 in 10. The researcher, according to the Economist, was so stunned at his own finding that he worked another two and a half years on it before publishing it in the Journal of the American Medical Association.
Other studies are pointing in the same direction. A longterm study of Framingham, MA, found the incidence of dementia, by age, has fallen about 20 percent per decade for four decades. A broader study found that across a range of wealthy countries dementia rates at every age have been falling about 13 percent per decade since the late 1980s.
Why? Experts theorize about greater education levels, more physical activity, less smoking, and healthier diets, among many other possible reasons.
We will keep an open mind.
Sources: The Economist; Fix the News