Spot the difference

If you live in the garden state, there’s a good chance you’ll come across the new Alzheimer’s Australia Victoria campaign to encourage communities to differentiate between forgetfulness and dementia.

By Yasmin Noone

If you watch Melbourne’s Channel 31 at any point over the next few weeks, use Facebook, watch YouTube videos, or live in Melbourne’s inner west or Gippsland, it’s pretty likely that you will be reminded about the difference between forgetfulness and dementia.

That’s because Alzheimer’s Australia Victoria has just launched its new awareness raising campaign, using both traditional and social media, to help communities understand what dementia actually is and how it differs from age-related memory loss.

The two-month long There’s a difference campaign, which kicked off yesterday, hones in on the key message about dementia by referring to commonly experienced scenarios which could be attributed to forgetfulness.

“There’s a difference between….forgetting your daughter’s birthday and forgetting you ever had a daughter,” one of the campaign messages proclaims.

“There’s a difference between….forgetting where you put the house keys and forgetting what the keys are used for.”

Alzheimer’s Australia Vic are set to use campaign posters, Facebook, Twitter, a 30-second television commercial, YouTube video, community noticeboards, and postcards (delivered to homes in selected areas in Victoria) to drive these messages home.

“Helping people understand the difference between some forms of memory loss and dementia while emphasising the importance of early diagnosis is critical,” Alzheimer’s Australia Vic CEO, Maree McCabe, said.

“…It is vital to make more people aware of Alzheimer’s Australia Vic and the wide range of services we can offer in relation to providing information and support at every stage of a person’s experience with memory loss and dementia.”

According to research conducted by Deloitte Access Economics earlier this year, the Victorian regions predicted to be hardest hit by the impact of dementia in the near future will be the western suburbs of Melbourne and Gippsland.

This, the report said, is due to growth corridors and an increasing population of older people in these areas.

The ‘There’s a difference’ campaign will therefore target these key locations.

Over the next two weeks, Alzheimer’s Australia Vic will run its Vic metro and regional print advertisements, and over the next two months it will air its Channel 31 Melbourne commercial and letterdrop campaign postcards throughout regional Gippsland and Melbourne’s inner west.

Notice-board posters will also be distributed to local politicians; council/community health centres; RSL and senior citizen clubs; and bowls and golf clubs in the same areas.

Alzheimer’s Australia Vic research fellow, Dr Maree Farrow, said the organisation aims to spread the message as “far-and-wide to as many people as we can”.

“I think a lot of people worry about being forgetful, particularly as they are getting older, because dementia tends to affect a lot of older people,” Dr Farrow said.

“If someone is having a few issues and they are forgetting things, they might think it is dementia.

“So our main message for people is that we all forget things from time-to-time. But it might not be a problem.

“And if you are worried about being forgetful, the first thing to do is see a doctor and talk about it. “

Dr Farrow said the campaign message also spins off previous Alzheimer’s Australia campaign catchcries which emphasise that dementia and ageing do not go hand-in-hand.

“We used to believe that for most people, when they got older, it was inevitable that they would forget and need help to do things. But now we know that most older people continue to function independently but some people will have brain diseases like dementia.”

But, she concluded, older age does not mean dementia, just as forgetfulness does not equate to Alzheimer’s disease.

“We still have a situation where dementia can go undiagnosed. Some people are having significant problems, are not getting a diagnosis, and are therefore not receiving the help and support that is available to them.

“So people working in the [aged care] field need to be more aware of what the signs of Alzheimer’s disease are and help the older person to be assessed and diagnosed.”

The new campaign has been made possible by funds provided by ExxonMobil Australia.

Victoria almost 72,000 people are living with dementia, 56 people develop dementia every day.

Related links

To view the television campaign, visit the AlzheimersVic YouTube channel.

To view the print advertisements, postcard and poster artwork, visit https://www.facebook.com/AlzheimersAustraliaVic/photos_albums#!/media/set/?set=a.471030486253283.103400.124170924272576&type=3

For more information or to talk to someone about your concerns, call the National Dementia Helpline on 1800 100 500 or visit www.fightdementia.org.au/vic
 

Tags: access-economics, alzheimers-australia, campaign, channel-31, deloitte, dementia, facebook, forgetfullness, memory, victoria, youtube,

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