Dementia wards in Pennsylvania hard-hit during the COVID-19 pandemic
Updated May 10, 2021;
Posted May 10, 2021
A person enters The Birches at Newtown assisted living facility, Tuesday, April 13, 2021, in Newtown, Pa. The deaths at the home and many others across Pennsylvania highlight the dangers that residents with dementia faced during the coronavirus pandemic and a state oversight system that imposed few protections during the worst of the crisis. (Stephanie Strasburg/Pittsburgh Post-Gazette via AP)AP
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By Sean D. Hamill | Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
PITTSBURGH (AP) In the weeks before she died of COVID-19 in the dementia unit of a suburban Philadelphia personal care home, Barbara Demech often lamented about the Alzheimer’s disease that began gripping her mind a decade earlier.
PITTSBURGH (AP) â In the weeks before she died of COVID-19 in the dementia unit of a suburban Philadelphia personal care home, Barbara Demech often lamented about the Alzheimerâs disease that began gripping her mind a decade earlier.
âSheâd say to me, âI just feel like somebody is in there taking over,ââ recalled her son, Mike Demech. âShe would say it often toward the end.â
Like so many people in the throes of dementia, it was difficult for her and others in the âmemory careâ unit to take the most basic steps â like wearing a mask or social distancing â and prevent themselves from contracting the disease.
WITF/Transforming Health Hilda Sierra-Marrero is living homeless in Lancaster. She has been diagnosed with multiple mental health disorders and finds it easier to live in her own “bubble.”
Mental health services in Pennsylvania may get a boost thanks to federal funding through the most recent Consolidated Appropriations Act and the American Rescue Plan.
Among other services, money can go toward
assisted outpatient treatment, a program designed to help people living with serious mental illnesses.
About half of people with schizophrenia and 40% of people with bipolar disorder are diagnosed with
anosognosia, a condition that impairs their ability to recognize they are ill, according to Betsy Johnson, implementation specialist at Treatment Advocacy Center.
By Sean D. Hamill and Pittsburgh Post-gazette •
Published May 10, 2021 •
Updated on May 10, 2021 at 2:21 pm
NBC Universal, Inc.
In the weeks before she died of COVID-19 in the dementia unit of a suburban Philadelphia personal care home, Barbara Demech often lamented about the Alzheimer’s disease that began gripping her mind a decade earlier.
“She’d say to me, ‘I just feel like somebody is in there taking over,’” recalled her son, Mike Demech. “She would say it often toward the end.”
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Like so many people in the throes of dementia, it was difficult for her and others in the “memory care” unit to take the most basic steps like wearing a mask or social distancing and prevent themselves from contracting the disease.
Dementia wards in Pennsylvania hard-hit during the pandemic
SEAN D. HAMILL, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
May 8, 2021
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PITTSBURGH (AP) In the weeks before she died of COVID-19 in the dementia unit of a suburban Philadelphia personal care home, Barbara Demech often lamented about the Alzheimer’s disease that began gripping her mind a decade earlier.
“She’d say to me, ‘I just feel like somebody is in there taking over,’” recalled her son, Mike Demech. “She would say it often toward the end.”
Like so many people in the throes of dementia, it was difficult for her and others in the “memory care” unit to take the most basic steps like wearing a mask or social distancing and prevent themselves from contracting the disease.