Mental health: dementia
Dementia is a term used to refer to a variety of illnesses and conditions which result in a global impairment of brain function and a decline in intellectual functioning, personality changes, and behaviour problems which disrupt independent living skills and social relationships.
There are a number of types of dementia including Alzheimer's disease, vascular dementia, Lewy body disease, alcohol-related brain damage (ARBD), frontotemporal dementia, subcortical dementia, and Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (CJD).
In 2023, the Scottish Government and the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities (COSLA) published their fourth national dementia strategy, Dementia in Scotland: Everyone’s Story. The 10-year strategy covers the years 2023-2033, with two-year delivery plans published every second year.
Studies on the prevalence of dementia present a confusing picture, partly because of different definitions, assessment strategies and population samples employed. Estimates of the prevalence of Alzheimer’s disease and dementias are available from the Scottish Burden of Disease Study (2015) (273 KB).
Public Health Scotland publishes annual data on dementia post-diagnostic support to report on the Scottish Government’s Local Delivery Plan Standard. The most recent publication (1026kB) shows data to 2020/21, and found that in 2020/21:
- Of the 19,473 people who were newly diagnosed with dementia, 6,569 (33.7%) referred to dementia post-diagnostic support;
- Of those who were referred, 4,157 (81.0%) received a minimum of one year of post-diagnostic support*;
- *1,038 people were exempt from a minimum of one year of post-diagnostic support.
In 2021, the first Scottish Brain Health and Dementia Research Strategy (5.7MB) was published, prepared by Alzheimer Scotland, The Scottish Dementia Research Consortium, and Brain Health Scotland. The strategy aims to ‘create an environment in Scotland to promote the conditions for the highest quality of brain health and dementia research and the rapid implementation of research into practice’.
There is further information on Dementia on the Public Health Scotland website.
Please note: If you require the most up-to-date data available, please check the data sources directly as new data may have been published since these data pages were last updated. Although we endeavour to ensure that the data pages are kept up-to-date, there may be a time lag between new data being published and the relevant ScotPHO web pages being updated.
