50 million people around the world suffer from dementia. In fact, every 1 in 10 people who live up to the ripe age of 65 have dementia. A degenerative neurological disease, dementia can result from long-term alcohol abuse, fluid build-up in the brain, traumatic brain injuries, or just old age.
Or so we think.
For most of us, dementia is just the gradual deterioration of the human brain that comes with the passage of time. People assume that you get dementia as you get old as a rule of the thumb.
What if we told you that isn’t true?
How Trauma Causes Dementia
According to medical science, trauma due to accidents and injuries is one of the commonest causes behind dementia. Repetitive head trauma or traumatic brain injury have been known to lead to dementia in some cases, but it also depends on which part of the brain gets damaged. Memory loss, depression, and impaired speech are among the most obvious symptoms of the condition, although they don’t necessarily develop too soon.
But can dementia be due to something else? After all, everyone who has had a traumatic injury hasn’t ended up with dementia—neither have all dementia patients, all over the world, been in accidents causing traumatic injury.
Perhaps it’s some. . .
Other Kind of Trauma
Trauma isn’t a monolith, of course. In fact, in everyday usage, we don’t think of “trauma” in terms of traumatic injury at all. We think of it in terms of a more psychological condition: something that you can feel only in your head. It doesn’t necessarily have physical symptoms—but the pain is real enough.
And repetition of this kind of trauma is equally debilitating.
What Does Trauma Feel Like?
Trauma can happen due to a number of reasons: loss of a loved one, constant anxiety, recurrent abuse, etc. While the causes might differ from person to person, what doesn’t differ are the symptoms and stages of traumatic development, some of which include:
- Fatigue
- Anxiety
- Flashbacks
- Nightmares
- Depression
- Sleep disorders
- Emotional avoidance
Trauma might feel like many things, but never nice. It feels like your head is a pressure cooker and all you want is escape.
Dementia as an Escape
Although it might not strike you at first, but dementia is an escape. It gives you the gift of forgetting. Forget all the bad that’s ever happened to you—all the bad and ugly in this world. It is truly a blessing for people who want nothing more than just to forget. Dementia offers them an unusual but certain escape from the dark pits of their mind and memory. It’s liberating for some people.
What Does the Creator Have to Say?
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