When people think of dementia, they don’t think medical condition.

They think stupid, crazy, dependent, weird, senile, and a bunch of other negative stuff, but usually not medical condition.

I am puzzled.

Why do so many people not realize dementia is a caused by a medical condition?

I teach a college class called “Families, Alzheimer’s, and Related Dementias.” I created the course at our university and have taught it for over 10 years.

I have had several students start this course with impressive misconceptions about dementia. (If they ended the course with those same impressive misconceptions, it’s no one’s fault but my own.)

One student frequently spoke in class about how her grandma was faking dementia. Why was she convinced that her grandma was faking dementia? Because her grandma would fail at a task (like vacuuming) but then be able to do it later. If she really had dementia and forgot how to vacuum, how could she remember later? It didn’t make sense to this student, so she assumed her grandma was faking.

It took me half a semester to convince her that dementia doesn’t progress in a linear fashion. People with dementia, like other people, may forget things but remember them later.

I’ve had students who thought that dementia was a punishment for transgressions earlier in life. There was a student who insisted that you only got dementia if you didn’t believe in God–despite much evidence to the contrary. I think she was convinced this wasn’t the issue when I did a video panel of individuals with dementia and one was a minister.

Several students implied that if you were a smart person and tried hard you’d never show symptoms of dementia. If only people could “try” their way out of dementia.

I was once asked, on the first day of class, if I knew that most of the crimes in the United States were committed by people with dementia. I realized later that this student thought dementia was another term for poor judgment.

That’s only a handful of the misconceptions I’ve heard over the years.

Now I teach this course online rather than in-person. The misconceptions keep coming….only now they manifest in emails and discussion boards.

I may sound judgmental but I am not intending to come off that way. Most of my students are 18-24 years old, and what they know (and don’t know) about dementia is a reflection of what we’ve taught them.

Being a college professor makes you hyperaware of what “kids nowadays” don’t know. (I swore I’d never be that professor but here we are.)

Basic writing. Basic math. And all that….

(Me the other day: “How do you get to college and not know how to call and make a doctor’s appointment on the phone?”)

That’s not where I am going with this.

I’m talking about what people know about dementia when they come to college.

I have learned that kids don’t learn a lot about dementia and much of what they do learn is scary and plagued with negative stereotypes.

This is even true of kids who have had family members with dementia.

Our support group often tells me that members of their families are resistant to talking to the kids about dementia.

Please talk to the kids about dementia.

Please.

When we don’t talk to kids about things, kids make those things more frightening than they need to be.

And, trust me, the kids know something is going on. They always do.

If you don’t know how to talk to kids about dementia, find one of the kids’ books out there (we keep a list!) and read it to the kids.

We are willing to do Dementia Friends trainings for K-12 classrooms. Kids can even earn a certificate that they can put on the fridge.

We need to start educating about dementia the same way we educate about other health issues.

It starts with ending the stigma. It starts with stopping the whispering.

It starts with understanding, as a society, that dementia is caused by medical conditions.

It starts with knowing that a person with dementia is not stupid.

It starts with cultivating the idea that people living with dementia have worth and purpose.

It starts with raising kids in a culture that sees the value in those living with dementia.