Many Doctors Don’t Tell Patients They Have Alzheimer’s

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http://time.com/3755176/doctors-diagnose-alzheimers-dont-tell/

Well obviously this is a wonderful way to encourage patient involvement in their own treatment...

I figure that might be a helpful thing to know, so the person can then have some options to look at for treatment, or ways of reducing symptoms, from what i understand in early stages it can at least be slowed...but not if the person doesn't even know and thus cannot make any adjustments to life or treatment that might help them.

Also though how does a doctor keep a diagnoses from someone, if I was having a problem and went to the doctor...I'd be very suspicious if they just kept avoiding the answer to the question 'what is wrong with me' but yet still formed a treatment for me to go by....I wouldn't do a treatment without knowing what it is for but that's just me.

I've heard opinions (mostly from comedians, granted) that doctors often start giving inferior care to elderly people. Also fat people.

Maybe they pretend they don't know. I've had situations where my doctors were basically like, "I don't know what's wrong, but this treatment might help." Actually, the practice I go to nowadays seems pretty big on the "use treatments to diagnose" method. Certainly, I'm not going to turn down a potential solution to my horrible problem just because we aren't sure what the problem is.

I've seen this as well. I've had doctors who seemingly don't even try to figure out what the problem is they just throw medication at the symptoms. You have these symptoms, this fixes that symptom, try this and see if it works for you.
Good luck and stay safe.

Is it possible that those numbers are so high because these patients *forgot* that their doctors told them they had Alzheimer's? According to the article, they got this info by asking the patients…who have a disorder which causes them to forget stuff. I hope that doesn't sound too callous. I am wondering because my FIL has Alzheimer's and I can completely see him not remembering being told he had Alzheimer's and even forgetting that he went to a doctor at all. A few weeks ago, he showed up at an apartment my husband and I rented around 20 years ago, and was wondering where we were. This is NOT because nobody ever told him we have moved from that address- as a matter of fact, he helped us move from there way back when.

Having said that, I'm sure it does happen that doctors don't tell the patients. This society seems to view the elderly as a burden and I'm sure some doctors don't bother giving them proper care because "they're going to die soon anyway".