There are a wide range of conditions (neurological disorders, movement disorders, CSF disorders, sleep disorders, anemia, etc) that aren't dementia, but can loo

There are a wide range of conditions (neurological disorders, movement disorders, CSF disorders, sleep disorders, anemia, etc) that aren't dementia, but can look like it at times and will lead to someone being unable to care for themselves. That inability to care for oneself will persist until the conditions are successfully treated. The problem with a dementia diagnosis in that context is that someone, probably the patient's family, has to go out of their way to show that the patient actually has something else and find a doctor willing to look into it before any other doctors will even consider the idea that they don't have dementia. And while the patient has a dementia Dx, they will likely be chemically and physically restrained in a custodial care setting, which tends to further impair their functionality and ability to care for themselves, and that reduction in functionality is often taken as further proof that they are demented. I have had between 10 and 20 physicians and 3 neurologists tell my family over the past two decades that what my grandmother had was Alzheimer's, Lewy body, and Vascular dementia, and that she would only decline. As it turns out, they were all wrong. They weren't just a little wrong, they were all completely wrong. To myself and my family, it was obvious that they were wrong because she would come back home from the Hospital, SNF, Board & Care, or Day Program and function much better than she did in those custodial settings, but they would only see her as mostly non-functional because the way they treated her significantly worsened her conditions. We had to really dig to figure out what was going on, but most people probably don't have the time and energy to do what we did. There are also many people who do have different forms of dementia, but even in that population I imagine there are many treatable disorders missed that complicate their dementia. Ultimately, the elderly are the most medically complex population with the least amount of time left to live, and because of that they tend to be given the least amount of care, and what care they are given tends to be of lesser quality. It's understandable from the point of view of triage, but as a society we should acknowledge that.