Elderly people showing signs of dementia are being labelled as mad and dispossessed of land and other properties.
In a new study, researchers from the Aga Khan University said they are often not seen as suffering from a medical condition.
Instead, they are labeled as witches, crazy, having “lost network,” or “wendawazimu”. The consequences of these perceptions are tragic.
They lead to isolation, neglect, violence, and even murder, according to the study titled, “They are perceived to be witches, and some are killed: Community perceptions of elderly people living with dementia in Kilifi, Kenya.”
One villager told the researchers: “When an elderly person forgets too much or behaves unusually, people start saying, ‘This one has been bewitched.’”
Another noted that such individuals are often branded as witches and ostracised.
This stigmatisation stems from a lack of understanding of dementia as a medical condition.
Dementia is a general term for a group of neurological conditions that damage the brain and destroy nerve cells.
There are potentially 258,000 older adults living with dementia in Kenya, according to Dr Christine Musyimi of the Africa Mental Health Research and Training Foundation, who was not involved in the study.
People with dementia develop restless behaviours, such as pacing up and down, wandering out of the home and agitated fidgeting.
Some become suspicious, disoriented and even see, hear or believe things that are not real, especially at night.
Such behavioural changes are frequently interpreted as signs of supernatural influence or a curse “rather than aging or illness”.
The study was published last week in the Journal of
Alzheimer’s Disease.
