First therapeutic meeting for people with dementia held in Odesa

The Unforgettable Charitable Foundation, which focuses on dementia issues and provides assistance to people with this syndrome and their families, held its first meeting called the Unforgettable Cafe in Odesa.

As Iryna Zborovska, deputy director of the foundation, explained to Intent, "Cafe Unforgettable" is an entertainment and therapeutic event for people with dementia, as well as for their relatives and caregivers.

The Foundation plans to hold such meetings in Odesa regularly, every two months, similar to Kyiv and Lviv, where such meetings have been held since 2021. Iryna Zborovska noted that in 2022, the meetings were not held due to the invasion of the Russian Federation. In addition to Odesa, a similar meeting was held for the first time this year in Poltava.

Usually, about 20-30 guests gather in a cafe and volunteers are sought for each couple, so the number of participants can reach 40. According to Iryna Zborovska, such meetings help people with dementia get to know each other and are also therapeutic.

"Dementia is still very much stigmatized by both society and people themselves. They are ashamed of their condition, their relatives are ashamed of their condition. They don't go out, they avoid people, and eventually they are left alone with their problems. On the contrary, when they see at these meetings that there are people with the same problem, they start to feel better about themselves, and about their relatives. They can share their experiences. In turn, for people with dementia, it is an opportunity to feel important and to be able to go out in public," she said.

According to the deputy director of the foundation, the therapeutic effect is that people with dementia can delay the deterioration of symptoms through communication.

Official statistics put the number of people with dementia in Ukraine at more than 70,000, but as Iryna Zborovska noted, there are actually more people with dementia. The fact is that people themselves rarely go to doctors with symptoms, and doctors diagnose dementia symptoms poorly.

"Dementia is difficult to diagnose because it is usually preceded by other diseases. For example, a person is diagnosed with a stroke and then, when dementia develops, they do not go to the doctor, writing it off as a stroke," noted Iryna Zborovska.

According to international health organizations, more than 650,000 people in Ukraine are currently living with dementia, and this number is growing.