Although the loss of a relative to dementia can drag on for many years, families can still take an active role to improve the quality of a dementia sufferer's last days, a patients' families' group said.
A survey conducted with 55 family members of persons suffering from dementia who went through a program to learn more about dementia and how to deal with it found that 80 percent of patients said their family member's behavior had improved after the program.
The three-year pilot program, organized by the Kung Tai Medical Education Foundation and sponsored by the Department of Health, is in its second year.
"We have to help these families -- they are the silent victims of dementia," said Yeh Bin-chian (
"Families can minimize the pain and lighten the burden associated with caring for a loved one suffering from dementia by learning more about the disease," Yeh said.
Understanding can be difficult when loved ones suddenly start to behave in a bizarre fashion.
"When my mother-in-law first developed Parkinson's disease, we attributed the symptoms to natural forgetfulness," Wang Hui-mei (王惠美) said. "We did not realize she was seriously sick until she accused me of trying to seduce my father-in-law."
"Me, my husband and my father-in-law all yelled at her for making such a ridiculous claim. All of a sudden, the emotional turmoil brought out all her symptoms," she said.
The stress was overwhelming, she said.
"My husband ended up in NTU's mental ward for heavy depression and a suicide attempt," she said
Wang Yi-min (王憶敏), a psychologist who leads many meetings in the program, said that readjusting unreasonable expectations is necessary to avoid frustration and unnecessary emotional pain when dealing with people afflicted with dementia.
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching