Dementia services: surveys paint gloomy picture

A series of surveys by the Alzheimer's society has painted a gloomy picture of the state of dementia care in the UK. The first one, produced in conjunction with the Liberal Democrats found that two-thirds of people with dementia were not listed as having dementia on their GPs records, as required under the current GP contract. The research also revealed a huge variation in dementia diagnosis across the country. Another survey of GPs, done with the Daily Mail, found that 29% of them admitted that they did not have enough training to diagnose and manage dementia, 60% said that there was a reluctance to diagnose because of a lack of support services, 40% felt hesitant to make a diagnosis because of a lack of drug treatments and 10% felt that there was nothing that could be done for people with dementia. A third survey, carried out for GP magazine, found that a third of primary care trusts had closed or downgraded dementia services in the past three years and that two-fifths of them failed to provide any specialist services at all.

You can find the Alzheimer's Society web site at

http://alzheimers.org.uk/site/index.php