Not all cultures readily recognize Alzheimer's disease as a medical condition, as one family's story reveals.

Last week, we cited an excellent article from The Bay Citizen that emphasized the growing need for health care language services in America's aging immigrant population.

The story behind the story, published the same day, profiles how one Latino-American family has dealt with an elderly father's Alzheimer's diagnosis.

In an article entitled Facing Alzheimer's as a Family, journalist Paul Kleyman explains how members of the Garcia family, who live in Mountain View, California, made the decision to set up a three-generation household in order to better care for their aging parents.

Father and grandfather Felipe Garcia, 79, suffers from Alzheimer's – a huge challenge for any family. But cultural differences regarding the recognition of Alzheimer's in the Latino community have represented an added complication.

Originally, the Garcia's adult sons kept his condition a secret, which they now regret.

“'I believe that within the Latino community there are still a lot of unknowns or misperceptions about what Alzheimer’s is,” Felipe's son] Oscar points out in the article. “'Our feelings at first were of being shocked and scared.'”

Oscar Garcia believes that these cultural barriers prevented the family from seeking an earlier diagnosis.

Clearly, as this example shows, health care campaigns in the US need to take into account both linguistic and cultural elements in order to communicate to all concerned.

Betty Carlson

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