Dr. Majid Fotuhi

In a lot of patients, that is exactly what happens.

In my practice, I've seen thousands of patients with different forms of dementia.

And I can't tell you how many times somebody came convinced that they have Alzheimer's disease.

And the family were saying that they're repeating themselves.

They're not doing things.

And we treated them with antidepressant medications, or we provided them with psychologists or therapists who helped them with cognitive behavioral therapy.

And three months later, they were much better.

So we will cure someone's Alzheimer's disease by these interventions, but they didn't have Alzheimer's disease.

They had depression.

In the past, depression in elderly was called pseudo dementia because people realized that it looks like dementia, but it's not dementia.

Practically speaking, many people in their eighties have a combination of some degree of depression and some degree of Alzheimer's disease.

And as you said, your depression then worsens the problems with Alzheimer's disease.

So even a person who has a combination of depression and Alzheimer's disease, treating the depression component makes the person one notch better.

The person may not come back to being normal again, but they will function better.

And they also feel better.

They may still not know what the idea is, but they feel better.

They're exaggerated.

I think the problem I have noticed that too many people have been looking at this downside of what could happen.

It's like saying people in their sixties, they have some chance of dying.

Well, yeah, everybody eventually dies and you can't say, well, it's a problem because everybody eventually dies.