Essentials: Assessment and Diagnosis of Dementia in People with Learning Disability

How do you assess whether a person with Learning Disability has dementia? People with a Learning Disability (Intellectual Disability) often have lifelong difficulties in learning, adaptive behaviour and skills, and dementia is characterised by difficulties in memory, cognition and skills. It may seem more challenging to recognise and assess dementia when some of the standard symptoms and tools for doing so may not work as well with people with Learning Disability (LD). 

Led by Dr Alwyn Kam, the expert speakers will draw from their own experience of working with people with Learning Disability to help explain how to assess for dementia when the person has a learning disability (LD). Delegates will discover what learning disability is, how dementia affects people with learning disability and explore using case studies and examples, the key skills and essential guidelines to assessing and diagnosing dementia in people with LD.

After attending this course delegates will be able to:

• Understand the prevalence of dementia in people with Learning Disability (LD) including Down's Syndrome
• Importance of recognising when to suspect dementia in a person with LD
• Measures used in the assessment of dementia in people with LD