ShareThisOlder people's ability to deal with the complexities of investments and finance can be affected by even the beginning phases of dementia, according to research published in January in the Journal of the International Neuropsychological Society.
"As patients progress to mild and moderate Alzheimer's, cognitive decline accelerates and impairments in financial skills become substantial and widespread," said Daniel Marson, one of the study's authors and director of the Alzheimer's Disease Center at the University of Alabama at Birmingham.
A Duke study in 2007 estimated that about one in seven Americans 71 or older have some form of dementia.
Family members of a person diagnosed with mild cognitive impairment -- a condition that often precedes Alzheimer's -- should urge the person to put estate and financial planning in place before the more severe impairments of dementia arrive.
"As patients progress to mild and moderate Alzheimer's, cognitive decline accelerates and impairments in financial skills become substantial and widespread," Marson said in material provided by UAB.
Doctors working with UAB have developed tests that measure a patient's ability to deal with financial questions from the person's knowledge of personal assets to remembering how to balance a checkbook.
E-mail Thomas Goldsmith at thomas.goldsmith(at)newsobserver.com
(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, www.scrippsnews.com.)
Must credit The News and Observer of Raleigh, N.C.With OLDERINVESTORSIDE
