This question comes from watching the TV right now, and they’re talking about Bruce Willis. I feel bad for him, I really do…
Bruce Willis apparently has what they call Frontotemporal Dementia. That’s a tounge twister mouthful for most average people, I can only assume Mr. Willis probably can’t even remember the name of his own condition…
Why isn’t there a ‘patient-friendly’ easy to remember name for disorders that literally affect a person’s brain and memory?
Like shit, I bet most people wouldn’t know what polytetrafluoroethylene is, but they gave everyone a simple name to know it by, teflon.
So, why don’t they have simpler terms for brain disorders so the suffering patient might be able to talk to their own doctor privately…?
How is “dementia” harder than any other word? If they are suffering from brain/memory disorders, wouldn’t any new or novel word have the same issue? I think the opposite would be better, and normalizing simplified forms of the medical terminology (dementia instead of frontotemporal dementia) in every day language allows those words to have deeper roots in someone’s memory, making it less novel and more resilient to certain memory issues.
How is “dementia” more difficult than other words?
Dementia is never even pronounced right.
It’s spelled that way, but it’s pronounced “demenshia”
I’ve never heard it pronounced any other way?
And my point is that being exposed to the word dementia, and taught what it means and how to say it, is no different than being taught how to say Teflon. When you first learn it, it will be a bit awkward. The more you and people around you use it, the more familiar it will become. That just how language works.
What do you propose we use instead of dementia? How would that be a better solution? I’m not against helping people with better accessibility, I just don’t see where this is a problem that can be solved by changing the words used. Especially since to me it seems like we already do what is being suggested in the title post. We already usually have a general term in common conversation in place of the full medical term used by medical professionals.
I think what this is telling us is that OP hangs out in circles where no one knows what dementia is, so it seems like a complicated word for them.
I’ve literally never heard anyone say dementia incorrectly.
Must be terrible for the french dementia patients then, those fuckers don’t even pronounce half of their words.