Does anyone know what questions are asked at an assessment? My mother was assessed by her doctor last week and scored 8 out of 9 despite the fact that she does not know her own date of birth, where she lives or what relation I am to her. She does not watch TV, listen to the radio or read a newspaper but spends all day putting things in and out of bags. She does not know what day of the week it is or that there was a hurricane in the Philippines last week so what do they ask? She calls her cat a dog and thinks her bedroom window is a painting. She refuses to allow me to see the doctor with her. I am confused as to how she passed. Any ideas please,
Angela[/QUOTE
Angela,
I doubt if she passed but she may well have scored 8.
In our area we GPs use the 6-CIT test and you can find it on Google and follow the link to patient.co.uk . You could try it on your mum and see how she does . A score of 8 or above indicates a likely memory problem. The questions are very simple e.g. day of week, year, month, counting backwards from 20. It only takes a few minutes. The harder part is getting your mum's permission to help her and be involved in her care. You could say you'll go in for a few minutes with her to the GP and leave when she asks you to? If all else fails you could write the GP a letter outlining your concerns and asking him or her if they would try to involve you in your mum's care, by asking your mum for permission to do so. GPs very much like to involve a person's relatives if the person may have dementia because they cannot rely on the person in front of them remembering what the plan is. On a personal note my dad scored well at first, and even though we knew/suspected he had dementia, it took a while for it to show up on the scoring tests. He still had treatment from a psychiatrist and we still had help from social services in the early stages. He went to the doctor by himself at first, but in the later stages we went with him, because he was not able to go alone, and he did not object.