Dementia is not an emotional illness, although rational thinking often confuses being emotional with being irrational.
Irrational means that it is not empirically rateable, which means that it cannot be accurately ascertained as true. Sometimes people with dementia are very lucid and communicate with clarity, yet at other times appear to be away with the fairies.
Whereas it is true that people with dementia are often irrational, they can at times appear to be very rational. In the same way, they can be unemotional one minute and very emotional the next.
Being unemotional or being irrational is not an illness, it is just polarised thinking or feeling that is flowing in a negative direction. Thinking & feeling negative thoughts & emotions is a symptom of normal life, for many people who are not diagnosed with dementia.
Dementia is an irrational illness but not because it is caused by irrational thinking. It is caused by the inability to access sufficient knowledge, on demand, to allow intelligent choices. Accessing knowledge to make intelligently informed choices is called reasoning.
Mental reasoning analyses available knowledge intelligently to see whether it is reasonable. The reason for choosing anything is because it is believed to be personally beneficial. Nobody in their right mind chooses anything that they believe to be personally detrimental.
When access to memory is blocked, so is access to knowledge and without knowledge, intelligence is diminished. Intelligence requires a free flow of positive thoughts because when thoughts stop flowing, choice is not possible. Making choices requires knowledge and knowledge requires intelligent application to enable a choice of action. Reason is the intelligent use of knowledge, without which, there is no reason and no reason to take action.
Dementia displays the inability to use knowledge intelligently. Even when we give someone the knowledge, they may still struggle to use it intelligently & reasonably. Using knowledge intelligently requires competence. It is mental capacity that stores knowledge and it is emotional competence that allows us to use that knowledge intelligently.
Intelligence is a measure of our competence to use knowledge beneficially. Using knowledge detrimentally is not intelligent. Intelligence requires the competence of emotional power. When my emotional power is high enough, I have the mental capacity to use knowledge competently. When my emotional power is low, my mental capacity to use knowledge competently is diminished. I am said to lack focus or lose interest, when I have insufficient emotional power to concentrate my thinking to enable adequate reasoning.
Dementia suffers with the inability to access knowledge, which inhibits the emotional competence to enable intelligent reasoning. Therefore, it is no good telling a person with dementia what to do, without giving them the emotional intelligence or mental power to do it. Without the mental knowledge & the emotional competence, there is no reason to do anything.
Emotional competence is what allows knowledge or intelligence to be intelligent. Intelligence gives meaning to knowledge, which is just an unknown fact until it is given meaning. When I know how to use knowledge intelligently, it has a meaning. When I give knowledge a meaning, I am able to use that knowledge intelligently. Meaning balances knowledge with reason.
Knowledge is a physical fact that is useful when mental reasoning reveals its emotional meaning. When reasoning has a balanced meaning, life is empowered & enlightened. Being enlightened, empowered & enabled is the purpose of life. With reason, meaning & purpose, I am able to fulfil the potential of my life.
Dementia is without meaning, reason or purpose because it is an expression of life without reason, meaning or purpose. When the reasoning is lost, the meaning becomes confused and the purpose is frustrated
The incapacity of no reasoning and the incompetence of emotional unawareness result in the inability to see any fulfilling purpose to life, which is a normal state of mind for many people. Dementia is just an extreme, or intensely negative & irrational, experience of this normal state of human affairs.