This question comes from watching the TV right now, and they’re talking about Bruce Willis. I feel bad for him, I really do…

Bruce Willis apparently has what they call Frontotemporal Dementia. That’s a tounge twister mouthful for most average people, I can only assume Mr. Willis probably can’t even remember the name of his own condition…

Why isn’t there a ‘patient-friendly’ easy to remember name for disorders that literally affect a person’s brain and memory?

Like shit, I bet most people wouldn’t know what polytetrafluoroethylene is, but they gave everyone a simple name to know it by, teflon.

So, why don’t they have simpler terms for brain disorders so the suffering patient might be able to talk to their own doctor privately…?

  • over_clox@lemmy.worldOP
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    24 days ago

    Yes, it’s easy for most people to say and spell dementia. Except for some of the people actually suffering from brain/memory disorders…

    • Mesophar@pawb.social
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      24 days ago

      How is “dementia” harder than any other word? If they are suffering from brain/memory disorders, wouldn’t any new or novel word have the same issue? I think the opposite would be better, and normalizing simplified forms of the medical terminology (dementia instead of frontotemporal dementia) in every day language allows those words to have deeper roots in someone’s memory, making it less novel and more resilient to certain memory issues.

      • over_clox@lemmy.worldOP
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        24 days ago

        How is “dementia” more difficult than other words?

        Dementia is never even pronounced right.

        It’s spelled that way, but it’s pronounced “demenshia”

          • over_clox@lemmy.worldOP
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            23 days ago

            Thanks AI!

            Pronunciation of Dementia

            The word “dementia” is pronounced as follows: Phonetic Spelling

            dih-MEN-shuh
            

            So where the hell did the T in dementia come from in the first place, when in place of the T it’s pronounced with the SH sound? Yet another unnecessarily confusing word. Sigh, English is fun like that huh?