21 May 2013

Carey Mulligan: raise dementia awareness

Carey Mulligan, star of The Great Gatsby, tells Channel 4 News about her plans to raise awareness of Alzheimer’s, and says there is a “real problem” with how we treat the elderly in the UK.

Ms Mulligan has decided to speak out about the impact of Alzheimer’s because of her family experience – her grandmother has had the disease for many years.

She is lending her support and fame to the Alzheimer’s Society. She says her family would have struggled to cope without the charity’s support.

And Ms Mulligan, who plays the role of Daisy Buchanan in The Great Gatsby, says she hopes people will become more aware of the impact of dementia.

‘Real problem’

“I think people need to be more aware in their daily lives of people who could be suffering from Alzheimer’s,” she said.

“To be aware that somebody who can’t count their change in a shop when they are trying to buy a newspaper is not someone being old and doddery. They might potentially be suffering from Alzheimer’s and they might just need some help and assistance.”

She thinks there is a “real problem” with the way the elderly are treated in the UK, and says various care homes she visited when looking for a home for her grandmother showed “a real lack of respect, a real lack of dignity”.

Dementia in the UK

Dementia describes a set of symptoms including memory loss, mood changes and problems with communicating or reasoning.

According to the Alzheimer’s Society, there are currently 800,000 people in the UK with dementia, of which Alzheimer’s is the most common form. Two thirds of people with dementia are women.

More than 17,000 younger people have dementia, but the proportion of sufferers doubles for every five year age group. A third of people over 95 have dementia.

Around 60,000 deaths a year attributed to dementia, the society says. It also says the cost of dementia to the UK in 2012 was £23bn.