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This page is an AI-assisted Turkish summary of the study presented at the 26th World Congress of Psychiatry. The study belongs to the presenting authors; please refer to the original source when citing it.

Prevention across the spectrum: strategic approaches to reducing dementia risk

Prevention across the spectrum: strategic approaches to reducing dementia risk

Dementia prevention efforts should begin decades before cognitive impairment becomes clinically apparent, and psychiatric factors, particularly depression, should be addressed as both risk indicators and modifiable targets for intervention.

The presentation examines dementia prevention from a psychiatric and life-course perspective, arguing that neuropsychiatric symptoms may be not only a consequence of neurodegeneration but also a marker of vulnerability and an opportunity for early intervention. Depression is highlighted as having a distinctive role: across the life course, it may function as a modifiable risk factor, an early manifestation of neurodegenerative disease, or both. The 2014 Lancet Neurology analysis by Norton and colleagues identified depression as one of seven modifiable risk factors for Alzheimer’s disease and estimated that, after accounting for overlap, approximately one-third of cases could be attributed to these factors; the 2024 Lancet Commission expanded this framework to 14 modifiable factors associated with approximately 45% of dementia cases. The talk discusses depression, anxiety, sleep disturbances, chronic stress, social isolation, substance use, and vascular and metabolic health in an integrated manner. It also addresses sex-specific patterns in neurodegenerative diseases, noting that the burden of Alzheimer’s disease is disproportionately high among women, whereas Parkinson’s disease is more common among men. Menopause is highlighted as a critical transition for neuropsychiatric and brain health, during which hormonal changes may converge with vulnerability to depression, sleep disturbances, cognitive symptoms, and cardiometabolic risk, offering an important window for individualized intervention. In conclusion, the presentation argues that psychiatrists are uniquely positioned to identify individuals at risk before dementia develops, and that systematic treatment of psychiatric illness should be incorporated into comprehensive, sex-sensitive strategies that also address lifestyle, social, vascular, metabolic, and reproductive factors.

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