What is Pick’s disease

Airing on Channel 4 on 20 February, he explores his father’s everyday life with the condition, but also his father’s past.

It has its sad moments, showing how his dad’s personality has been affected by the disease but also has its funny moments for that same reason.

But what exactly is Pick’s disease? With a little help from the Alzheimer’s Society, here’s a quick explanation.

What is it?

Also called ‘frontotemporal dementia’, it’s one of dementia’s less-common forms as it’s thought to account for less than 5% of all dementia cases.

It also has a genetic link – according to the NHS, up to 40% of people with frontotemporal dementia have a family history of the condition.

David and Colin (Picture: Twitter/@Baddiel)

What are the symptoms?

This is where it gets a little complicated; there are three types of frontotemporal dementia: behavioural variant frontotemporal dementia, progressive non-fluent aphasia, and semantic dementia.

Behavioural variant frontotemporal dementia is the most common, affecting around two-thirds of people with Pick’s, and makes someone’s behaviour and personality change.

So someone with it might lose their inhibitions often in socially inappropriate and impulsive ways, such as making inappropriate comments about someone’s appearance, for example.

They might also lose interest in people and things and lose sympathy or empathy for others – but not in the way that happens when you’re depressed, as they won’t necessarily feel sad.

David talks to Susanna Reid and Piers Morgan on ‘Good Morning Britain’ TV (Picture: Ken McKay/ITV/REX/Shutterstock)

A tendency to binge is pretty common too – whether that’s consuming sweet and fatty foods or alcohol and cigarettes – and they can also develop repetitive and compulsive behaviours such as hoarding or repeated gestures.

But other two types are less about personality, and cause issues with language instead.

Frontotemporal dementia is diagnosed most often between the ages of 45 and 65, but can affect older and younger people too (Picture: Pexels)

With progressive non-fluent aphasia, they might develop slow, hesitant speech or start to mispronounce things, make grammar errors and struggle to understand complex sentences.

And with semantic dementia, their speech will be fluent but have their vocabulary and understanding of what objects affected.

They could forget what every day things are called – anything from a cat to a tin opener, for example.

Judging by David’s dad Colin’s symptoms, he has the first type.

Source: http://metro.co.uk/2017/02/21/what-is-picks-disease-6460735/