Atharv Sarup, an 18-year-old management student, had a habit of misplacing the keys of his bike. Last week, he forgot where he had kept his wallet and then missed an important test in his college because he forgot the date.
Finally, his father took him to a renowned psychiatrist in Lucknow and the diagnosis left the father aghast. The young boy had been found to be suffering from dementia — a disorder that is known to affect the elderly.
The doctors have advised the parents that Atharv should not be allowed to move out of the house unaccompanied and should be kept in the house in special care. His education, for the time being, has been put on hold.
Atharv, incidentally, is not the only one to have been struck by dementia at such a young age. There are others in his age group who are showing similar symptoms but continue to ignore the problem.
“In the past six months, we have had at least a dozen such cases where the age of the patient in the late teens or early twenties. The disease was earlier known to affect the elderly persons and this trend, therefore, is frightening because there is actually no cure for dementia,” said Dr R.K. Agarwal, a leading psychiatrist who runs his own clinic for mental rehabilitation.
According to the doctor, the incidence of dementia in younger people is a result of the growing problem of depression and anxiety attacks among teenagers.
“Till about a decade or two ago, the problem of depression or anxiety was not known among teenagers. Lifestyle problems are introducing teenagers to these disorders. There is peer pressure, growing competition and frustration among the young people and parents are unable to deal with the problem at an early stage. It is only when the acute depression or anxiety leads to dementia that they seek medical help,” he explained.
Dr Anand Ramakrishnan, a London-based psychiatrist who was here to attend a conference on geriatrics, also said that dementia was “getting younger” by the day and people must understand the symptoms so that the disorder can be tackled.