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Notes:
Senility affects only 1 in 10. Everyone experiences some decline, but the normal person is able to recognize the changes and adjust to them.
Senility's hallmark is a failure of judgment, so that all too often (though not invariably) the person affected is not conscious of the loss.
Moreover, hardly anyone is brave enough and diplomatic enough to tell an elder that we've noticed some inconsistencies that would not have been committed in the past.
How can this be done? First,talk sympathetically about aging by mentioning those things we've noticed in ourselves. Others characteristically respond in conversation by echoing their own experiences. This echoing is the crucial step. We must continue to talk about aging and even our own cognitive changes, lying if necessary, in a sympathetic and understanding way (without humor! -- which may be understood as sarcasm), until our quarry begins to reflect on personal experiences.
After this personal reflection begins, then we begin asking gentle, probing questions.
Do you sometimes find yourself wondering why you ever made a certain decision?
Do you sometimes find that it's hard to hold together all the threads that go into a decision?
Do your thoughts sometimes tend to fray or scatter? Is it sometimes hard to hold them together?
A couple of such questions, from a sympathetic friend, will often bring open description of our quarry's own self doubts, and can lead to the appropriate suggestion of making sure decisions are checked with a trusted advisor, and other recommendations as seem likely to be accepted.
Age-Related Intellectual changes:
- Trouble with challenging tasks when also distracted.
- Slower to process information.
- Short term memory decreases for process-oriented manipulative tasks.
- Long term memory decreases for recall but not recognition.
- The most common complaint is name recall or word finding.