The Institute of Social and Behavioral Medicine of the Faculty of Medicine of Pavol Jozef Šafárik University in Košice held, on 21 September 2021, the first of a series of 10 interactive meetings for informal caregivers (relatives, close persons, and friends) called Alzheimer Café Košice. The meetings are focused on selected aspects of caring for a person with dementia in the home environment and will be held at monthly intervals until June 2022.
The umbrella term dementia includes more than 100 forms. The most common form is dementia in Alzheimer’s disease, which occurs in 50–60% of all cases. Other forms include, for example, vascular dementia, dementia with Lewy bodies, frontotemporal dementia, mixed dementia, and dementia in Parkinson’s disease. Dementia is a progressive syndrome gradually leading to a slow decline in cognitive functions that affect daily living activities and social functioning. Providing care to a person living with dementia is usually a long-term situation associated with many needs, responsibilities, tasks, and events affecting the caregiver’s life.
The purpose of the support group is to provide useful information on the competencies of the informal caregiver, ways of adapting, and knowledge about legal issues. Discussions and sharing of experiences support the caregiver’s available resources and thus effectively reduce the burden arising from caring for the patient. The meetings are FREE OF CHARGE, organized with financial support from project VEGA 1/0372/20. The next meeting will take place ONLINE on 12 October 2021 – more information .
The project team also offers the possibility to participate in online research focused on caregiver burden and quality of life informal caregivers and formal care providers of persons living with dementia.
With our first Alzheimer Café Košice event, we also joined the global initiative World’s Alzheimer Day 2021 (21.09.2021) and the World’s Alzheimer Month campaign (September) to raise awareness of dementia syndrome and sought to contribute to reducing stigma toward patients and their informal caregivers.