For over tw two decades until her retirement in 2005, Ms Sumathi unscrambled chemical equations on the blackboard in a well-known women’s college in the city.

Not too long ago, the former chemistry professor would sometimes forget to dress herself after she stepped out her bath or would pour herself several cups of coffee back-toback, not remembering that she just had the beverage a few minutes earlier.

Today, at the dementia day care centre where she spends most of her waking hours, Ms Sumathi, 70, does not forget things as often, though she suddenly asks her aged friends, also suffering from the same degenerative mental disease, to hush up and ‘not disturb the class.’ While Sumathi is even given chemistry equations to solve to jog her mind, during ‘activity hour’, her friend Ramachandran, a retired official in the agriculture department calculates lengthy accounts, with the faint strains of Bajagovindham in the background.

“We have seen that dementia patients show remarkable improvement when they are kept mentally active and are in the company of others like them who are also recovering,” says Mr K. Radhakrishnan, director, Dignity Foundation, which runs a dementia day care centre in Neelangarai.

Much like a day care centre for kids, the elders here recite a few prayers when they come in the morning, spend a few hours engrossed in art work, or puzzles followed by nap time, lunch, and then nap again, until they are ferried back home by the centre’s bus.

“These patients need constant, gentle care, and it is not possible for working children to manage them at home during the day,” added Mr Radhakrishnan.

However, specialty centres that offer to take in dementia patients are few and far apart, says R.

Sathianathan, director of the Institute of Mental Health.

“With increase in life span, dementia, that generally sets in after 60 years of age, is going to be a huge public health problem in the coming years,” he warns.

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