The Green County Board of Supervisors learned in May that the county will be receiving a $271,000 grant to help treat people with dementia.

The Crisis Innovation Award Green County received to help dementia patients is being used to create a six-bed, short-term care dementia treatment facility at Pleasant View Nursing Home. 

Providing services to people with this illness is a growing concern and a difficulty for our health care system. The number of people suffering from Alzheimer’s Disease and dementia worldwide is supposed to increase to 82 million by 2030 and nearly double to 152 million by 2050. 

Dementia is not a disease; it’s a set of symptoms that include a decline in memory and thinking skills that negatively impact an individual’s ability to do everyday things. Having witnessed a close family member’s mental faculties and physical abilities decline due to the advance of dementia has been a personal eye-opener.

Dementia causes the decline of a person’s mental abilities. People with dementia can suffer numerous side effects, including depression, anxiety, and other mental health care illnesses that not only impact them, but also the people around them.

People with dementia are also more susceptible to falling, having poor nutrition and an inability to self-diagnose other health care problems.

The problem isn’t in the help available. There generally are many ways those with dementia can receive help with nutritional needs. Instead, it’s that someone with dementia can forget to eat or perhaps develop an unhealthy diet. A person suffering from dementia loses touch with things that previously made them happy. 

There is no cure for dementia. Since 2001, dementia-related deaths have increased three-fold.

People are living longer and illnesses such as dementia are becoming a primary cause of death. This is because dementia can lead to a reduced ability of a person to chew or swallow food or food going into a person’s lungs, which can cause pneumonia.

None of us are going to live forever and one illness or another will be part of our demise unless we’re claimed by some unnatural cause. The length of time people can suffer with dementia is considerable. The feeling of loss when a relationship changes due to decreased abilities for a person suffering from dementia is disheartening and real.

Our understanding of the needs of dementia patients continues to increase. We see good works and projects, such as what will come from the grant to Green County. The dementia facility at Pleasant View will be able to accommodate patients from not only Green County but also Lafayette, Iowa and Grant Counties.

Sometimes any help you can get when you’re feeling such a sense of loss or hopelessness is a godsend. That’s what this money will create in our community over time.

— Matt Johnson is publisher of the Monroe Times. His column is published Wednesdays.