Dementia is no longer a "disease of the elderly"

I meet the price that an entire family pays and also know how much early diagnosis, sharing, and receiving help can change the path. For years, we have been accustomed to thinking of dementia as a disease of the elderly. A grandfather who no longer remembers, a grandmother who gets confused, an aunt who no longer functions as she used to. However, in 2026, we already know that reality is much more complex. Dementia at a young age is defined when symptoms begin before the age of 65, and it can appear in one's 50s and even earlier. The World Health Organization estimates that dementia at a young age accounts for between 4%-6% of cases. In Israel, too, thousands of people are known who were diagnosed at young ages, as we recently published in the Amda association.

At age 50, the disease meets a family at a completely different place in life: work, mortgage, children, marriage, elderly parents, and sometimes a person who is at the peak of their career. This is a disease of one person that turns the life of an entire family upside down. A diagnosis of dementia does not remain in the doctor's room. It returns home. With all family members. Gradually, the spouse becomes a caregiver as well. The children begin to worry about the parent. The responsibility for finances, driving, medications, appointments, and errands changes. Things that were once taken for granted become tasks, and above all, the gradual loss of life as the family knew it hovers.

There are diseases that the environment understands immediately. When a person undergoes oncological treatments, for example, the very existence of the disease is usually clearer to the environment. In dementia, especially in the early stages, the person may look exactly as they always have. They may talk, dress, laugh, and sit with us in a cafe, while simultaneously struggling to find a word, forgetting a meeting, losing orientation, or struggling with a task they once performed easily. And this gap sometimes gives birth to painful reactions: "But he looks great," "I forget too," "It must be stress." And then comes the shame and with it the concealment. I meet families who do not tell. Not to friends, not to neighbors, sometimes not even to the extended family. On one hand, they can be understood; dementia is still wrapped in stigmas even in 2026, and this is what the Amda association strives to continue and change. There is a fear that friends will distance themselves, that they will talk to the person as if they do not understand, that they will stop inviting them, or that they will see only the disease from now on. But concealment has a price. When you don't tell, the friend doesn't understand why you stopped coming. The former colleague doesn't know why the person repeats the same story. Family members make up excuses, reduce meetings, and slowly the social circle may shrink. And then a double struggle is created: both the disease itself and the effort to hide it.

You don't have to tell everyone. You must not remain alone with this. Sharing does not mean publishing the diagnosis on social networks. Privacy is every person's right, all the more so for a sick person, but it is worth creating a small circle, even of people who know: a brother or sister, a close friend, a neighbor, the adult children. Explain what is happening and what can help. Sometimes it is enough to say: "There is cognitive decline. If he repeats a question, don't correct him with anger." Or: "Don't stop inviting us. It may be that we won't always come, but we still want to be part of it." Friends don't always distance themselves because they don't care. Sometimes they just don't know what to do or what and if to say. Don't say "it's just age."

Perhaps the most important message today is not to ignore a persistent change in memory, language, orientation, behavior, or the ability to perform familiar actions. Early diagnosis allows understanding the source of the change, ruling out other conditions, planning for the future, and adjusting treatment and support. And in the current era, this has additional significance: there are new treatments for early Alzheimer's that can, in suitable patients, slow the progression of the disease — not cure it, but gain precious time.

And what can be done right now? There is no magic formula, but there are things that have an important place in maintaining brain health, functioning, and quality of life: regular physical activity according to ability, healthy and balanced nutrition, including a Mediterranean diet pattern, cognitive activity such as reading, thinking games, learning, crosswords, and hobbies, maintaining social connections and avoiding isolation, treating blood pressure, diabetes, cholesterol, vision or hearing difficulties, and other risk factors, and above all, a familiar routine, meaningful activity, and continuing life within the family and community as much as possible. The updated WHO guidelines from 2026 emphasize physical activity, healthy nutrition, cognitive and social activity, and management of risk factors as part of the effort to reduce the risk of cognitive decline and dementia.

You don't have to know alone how to do this. One of the most important sentences I want to say to families is: don't wait for a crisis to ask for help. The Amda association is the address for families dealing with dementia and Alzheimer's in Israel. You can reach out for information, guidance, support, and tools for coping — even at the beginning of the journey, when everything is still confusing and unclear. Because dementia changes life, but it does not have to erase it. The person you loved before the diagnosis is there even after it. They are still a spouse, mother, father, friend. They need care — but no less than that, they need respect, company, meaning, and love. And their family needs exactly the same thing.

In 2026, it is time we stop whispering the word dementia/Alzheimer's. The sooner we talk about it, the sooner we identify it, and the sooner we ask for help, the more we can give the sick person and their family not only better treatment, but also a more human way to go through this complex journey that includes the patient at its head, but many other people in addition, whom we must not forget.

Dr. Nati Blum, the author of the column, is the CEO of the Amda association and holds a doctorate in psychology from Sacramento University, USA.