Piece of Mind: Mental Health & Psychiatry · Piece of Mind: Mental Health & Psychiatry

Episode 12: How dementia research hopes to change lives

·36 min·2 clips

Sue says, 'You meet one person with dementia, you've met one person with dementia.'

Catherine opens the podcast from the National Centre for Mental Health, a research centre made up of Cardiff, Bangor and Swansea universities. The conversation focuses on research into the causes of dementia. Sue Strawn joins as a retired publisher. She received a vascular dementia diagnosis in 2014 at age 57. Since then she has raised more than 30,000 for Alzheimer's Research UK. George Lush appears from the NCMH side as a Senior Psychology Assistant. He works on the UK Minds team. That team recruits people with experiences of dementia and other cognitive conditions. It also includes people with psychosis, schizophrenia, bipolar and depression. Catherine pauses to make an important point. Dementia is a neurological condition. It is not the same as the mental ill health the programme usually discusses, such as anxiety and depression. That distinction stays in view as the conversation develops. George explains that UK Minds is part of wider research aimed at understanding these disorders more fully. The work is also tied to reducing mental health stigma. It aims to lower the barriers that keep people from access and treatment. Another goal is to collect anonymised data that can help develop new treatments and tests. Catherine links that effort to personalised medicine and notes that mental health research can feel behind the way physical health conditions have been studied and taken seriously. George replies that every person's experience of mental health and cognitive impairment is unique and should be reflected in the data. The episode ends on the idea that research works best when it reflects lived experience and individual stories.

As heard by us

A humane, research-led conversation about dementia that keeps diagnosis, stigma, and future treatments in view.

This conversation stays grounded in dementia research, with Sue Strawn's lived experience and George Lush's work recruiting people with experiences of dementia and other cognitive conditions into UK Minds.

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Why you'd press play

You want a calm, grounded look at research into the causes of dementia and what it could change for people living with it.

Read the full recommendation in PlayNext →

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