In the Netherlands, 300,000 people currently live with a form of dementia. 5 percent of that group — about 15,000 people — of them are still young, they were diagnosed when they were under 65. For these young people, things usually change much more than for people who develop dementia at an older age.
They often have a family, sometimes children living at home, a busy social life and a job. In recent weeks, the ‘Margreet’ program followed a number of these young people in our province. We talked about the impact on the family, about living at home or more sheltered, about ‘keeping busy’ and this last episode about the hope everyone has… the development of medicines.