Dementia awareness-raising activities by pharmacists in a local care prevention project contributing to the early detection of dementia

Background: As part of local care prevention efforts, Nagoya City offers the Older Adult Vitality and Longevity Promotion Project to older adults over 65 years of age. Objective: Pharmacists provided dementia awareness seminars and instruction on self-check methods for the initial symptoms of dementia in a local care prevention project. We sought to investigate the influence of the seminars and dementia self-check instructions on the motivation of participants to seek physician consultation for early detection of dementia. Methods: Dementia awareness seminars and dementia self-check instructions were provided to 194 participants during the study period of October 2015 to January 2017. After two months of seminars, we investigated whether participants had consulted a primary care physician or memory-loss specialist. Results: The following were the most frequently reported items from the self-check list: "Unable to recall the names of things" by 129 participants (66.5%),"Forget where they put things" by 106 participants (54.6%), and "Unable to handle two things at the same time" by 58 participants (29.9%). Within two months after a seminar, 12 participants had consulted a medical facility for follow-up, of whom 3 were prescribed the dementia medication donepezil hydrochloride. Conclusion: Results of this study suggest that dementia self-check instructions provided in the Older Adult Vitality and Longevity Promotion Project may be helpful to prompt currently independent older adults with latent mild dementia to consider formal clinical assessment.