{"id":80182,"date":"2026-10-19T11:08:49","date_gmt":"2026-10-19T09:08:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/visualjournalism.de\/?post_type=magazin&p=80182"},"modified":"2026-10-28T16:51:48","modified_gmt":"2026-10-28T14:51:48","slug":"where-have-you-taken-me","status":"publish","type":"magazin","link":"https:\/\/visualjournalism.de\/en\/magazine\/anger\/where-have-you-taken-me\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Where have you taken me?\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"\r\n
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\n\tAnger<\/a><\/div>\r\n

\r\n \u2018Where have you taken me?\u2019 <\/h2>\r\n\r\n
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Dementia doesn\u2019t only make people forget \u2013 it can also make them feel more intensely. Sometimes what is left, above all, is anger at a world they no longer understand. Three people tell us what that means. By Frieda Gabke<\/a>, Anna Daliah Behnke<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n <\/div>\r\n \r\n

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The phone is lying on the living-room table<\/strong> and the same Albanian folk song is playing yet again. Leonida Gashi has stopped counting how many times she has heard it this afternoon. Her grandfather sits in front of it, hands resting in his lap, eyes fixed on the screen. She asks whether he has eaten. He nods. The food on the table is untouched. Afternoons like this were typical of the two years Leonida\u2019s grandfather spent living with her family, three generations under one roof. Looking back, they seem quiet \u2013 but appearances are deceptive. Anger was never far away.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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After his wife died, Leonida\u2019s grandfather became more and more confused. First he forgot keys and passwords, then bank transfers and names. He no longer knew whether he had paid his home helps. Some of them took advantage of this. Others complained that he was disrespectful: he resisted their help and became angry when they set limits.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When the family finally brought him from Kosovo to Germany in 2020, his dementia was already well advanced. He didn\u2019t understand where he was, or why. \u2018Where have you taken me?\u2019 he asked again and again. Leonida began to look after him. \u2018Somebody had to stay with him. I became his minder,\u2019 she says. She was 15 at the time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Over time, her grandfather became more and more emotional and unpredictable. If tablets were missing or things weren\u2019t where he expected them to be, he would get angry and bang his fist on the table. Conversations could turn in an instant. Sometimes he tried to take a double dose of sleeping pills, and he lied to his family to play them off against each other. \u2018When we realised he was being sneaky, he got really cross,\u2019 says Leonida. The illness changed not only her grandfather but the whole family, which had to learn to live with his anger.<\/p>\n\n\n<\/div>\n\n\n

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A different person<\/h2>\n\n \n <\/div>\n\n \n\n\n\n\n

Insults, threats and physical aggression can all come with dementia. Most often, the people on the receiving end are relatives and carers \u2013 the very people who look after those with the condition and want to help.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The biochemist Dr Norman Koglin, who researches imaging techniques for the early diagnosis of Alzheimer\u2019s, says this is not a question of character. \u2018There are areas of the brain that drive emotions and others that hold them in check,\u2019 he says. \u2018When these control mechanisms stop working, people can become aggressive or impulsive.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A brain affected by dementia processes stimuli differently, he explains. Often it can only take in one thing at a time. A television in the background or several people talking at once can be enough to overwhelm someone. \u2018The brain can compensate for a long time,\u2019 says Koglin. \u2018But at some point the areas that make up for the damage stop working too.\u2019 The anger that relatives experience, then, is the result of parts of the brain falling silent.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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A look inside the brain<\/h2>\n\n \n <\/div>\n\n \n\n\n\n\n

According to a prevalence study<\/a> from 2010, 52 per cent of people living in care homes in Germany had dementia. Because the population is ageing, the German Alzheimer\u2019s Society<\/a> expects between 2.3 and 2.7 million people to be living with the condition by 2050. The risk of dementia rises sharply with age. The fact that two thirds of those affected are women is mainly down to their higher life expectancy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Companies and research institutes around the world are working to make pathological changes in the brain visible long before the first symptoms become noticeable in everyday life. At Lantheus Germany<\/a>, researchers develop radioactive tracers which, once injected, spread through the body and accumulate wherever amyloid plaques have formed in the brain. These protein deposits are regarded as an early sign of Alzheimer\u2019s disease. Conventional methods such as CT or MRI cannot detect them at an early stage \u2013 PET scans can.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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