Dementia at a VERY Early Age?

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I am 23 years old, but I think I have possibly been developing the symptoms of dementia over the last few years. My cognitive abilities have been falling. I am becoming more and more forgetful. I am having trouble concentrating. My mind is more often than not empty. I am having less and less motivation.

I think that's pretty unlikely without some underlying neurological or medical problem. If you're concerned, I would get yourself to a doctor though. What about sleep disorders or depression? Have you had any physical symptoms like headaches or fatigue? Are you on any medication? There are a lot of conditions that could cause those symptoms, but I think you should get yourself checked out. I really doubt it's dementia. Even Huntington's Disease wouldn't present that early.

Extreme early onset dementia is rare. Get yourself to a teaching hospital, if possible, and see a neurologist, no matter. I know what I'm talking about.

Take essential fatty acids....You wouldn't happen to be a vegetarian would you?
i found that after being a vegetarian for several years I was having severe short term memory problems because of certain vitamin deficiencies...so i started eating fish again..and gradually everything else.

I still have memory problems...

I have been joking about having Juvenile dementia since I was in 6th grade

Did anyone know that Aspergers was known at one stage as "Youth Dementia"? Actually that was the name for the whole spectrum.

Felt that needed to be said in a thread like this one.

Cool. Sounds like a band name.

Autism was formerly known as "infantile dementia". It wasn't until Kanner started calling it autism that that name took on, iirc. Then again this was also before RTT/CDD/AS/PDD-NOS were included in the DSM umbrella.

+1
It's also worth pointing out that aspergians are often easily distracted, borderline ADD/ADHD, and that you're not remembering things may not be memory loss, rather you were distracted and never fully processed them in the first place. This happens to me often, I'll get distracted then not remember what my wife was talking to me about , not because I've forgotten but because of the distraction, I never knew in the first place. It's really hard to focus on a conversation if you're distracted by something (also, sometimes other misremember things, it may not just be you).

Gee, that sounds like the way I felt in my 20s!! !! ! The memory problems were a combination of getting older, and mineral deficiencies. Do you also get headaches?

Really, depending on timing and current status, you may be going through EXACTLY what I was. I am better now in a lot of ways even though I am now almost twice as old as you are.

I felt alot the same way at the exact same age too...and I am almost 10 years older than you.

Emil Kraepelin, who wrote that paper, is considered the "father of modern psychiatry." His nosology (classification of diseases) is the basis of every edition of the DSM after the DSM-II, i.e., Freudianism is basically dead.

At last! A first name! Thanks, Nom - appreciate it!

Yep - and in between time not only did we have Freud we had Eugene Bleuler as well who muddied the waters somewhat with the alternative of the time: Schizophrenia

So much so that there are still some quacks today who insist on mixing Schizophrenia up with Aspergers!!

I came across an academic paper recently in which one of the writers argues returning to the term, "dementia praecox" (premature dementia), and abandoning use of "schizophrenia."



Schizophrenia was, through the 1970s, a huge category. It included folks on the autism spectrum. It was not until the DSM-III that schizophrenia and autism were differentiated.

Personally speaking, I was myself diagnosed with childhood schizophrenia in the mid 1960s and was subjected to a battery of ECTs (shock treatments) in 1967. I write about those experiences here:

http://narrative.neurelitism.com