CHICAGO: A Canberra researcher has received more than $600,000 to fund dementia research in the nation’s capital and improve how aged care workers treat behavioural problems among residents with dementia.
Moyra Mortby from the ANU’s Centre for Research on Aging, Health and Wellbeing has collaborated with a Swedish research group to mirror a trial in the Scandinavian country and train Goodwin Aged Care Facilities staff how to reduce the prevalence of behavioural problems associated with memory decline.
Dr Mortby is the only ACT researcher to share in the federal government’s $43 million fund for dementia research development and will carry out the four-year trial from the beginning of next year.
She said more than 90 per cent of aged care residents displayed behavioural problems.
“There are lot of different types of behavioural problems associated with dementia but we’re talking about things like wandering behaviours, aggression, depression, apathy, inhibition – those kind of things,” she said.
“They are a main component of the progression of dementia. They are also associated with earlier transition into residential aged care as well.”