Why don't they have simpler names for brain disorders, where perhaps even the person suffering the disorder might be able to remember the term themself?

Submitted ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago⁩ by ⁨over_clox@lemmy.world⁩ to ⁨nostupidquestions@lemmy.world⁩

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…?

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cecilkorik@lemmy.ca ⁨1⁩ ⁨hour⁩ ago
Is “senile” not simple enough for you? The problem is, it’s maligned because its too loosely applied and becomes used as an insult. So it’s really a no-win scenario. Make it too simple and it becomes clinically useless and people will throw it around like an insult, make it too complex and it becomes only useful in clinical settings and average people can’t remember it. Is there a middle ground? I’m not sure. Alzheimer’s and dementia/demented are kind of in the middle, but they both get used inappropriately and are clinically useless, so they end up being a worst of both worlds.

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- over_clox@lemmy.world ⁨42⁩ ⁨minutes⁩ ago
  You do make a bit of a point there, it really does seem like a ‘no-win’ scenario…
  
  Sigh, just brainstorming a thought towards trying to assist disabled people a little better. 🤷
  
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Skullgrid@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨hour⁩ ago
couple more examples for you that aren’t just about how complex the word is :

Stutterers : good luck saying this word while you stutter.

Dyslexia : good luck spelling this word.

Lisp : yeah, that S is never going to hit the mark.

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- over_clox@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨hour⁩ ago
  Hey, I can spell sexdaily!
  
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MedicPigBabySaver@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨hour⁩ ago
Just call it: “CRS”… can’t remember shit.

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- over_clox@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨hour⁩ ago
  My elders call that CRAFT…
  
  Can’t Remember A Fucking Thing
  
  Sad chuckles…
  
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IWW4@lemmy.zip ⁨4⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
That’s a type of dementia.

So the answer the question is they do.

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- over_clox@lemmy.world ⁨4⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  Yes, I get that. The word dementia itself has 3 syllables, they can’t come up with a shorter and easier to remember and speak 2 syllable version?
  
  They shortened polytetrafluoroethylene down to 2 syllables, so why not help those suffering brain disorders and memory issues?
  
  You ever ask a person suffering Alzheimer’s how to actually spell their own condition? They’ll probably be either like ‘old timers’ or just a frustrated ‘fuck you’
  
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  - DemBoSain@midwest.social ⁨3⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
    They shortened the name of PTFE to Teflon because they wanted to sell it. Once there’s a market for frontotemporal dementia it will get a short name too.
    
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solrize@lemmy.ml ⁨3⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
It’s worse, e.g. aibohphobia (the fear of palindromes). Sufferers can’t seek treatment because they’re afraid to even say its name.

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- over_clox@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  Interesting, I wasn’t aware of such a condition.
  
  Thank you for sharing 👍
  
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  - solrize@lemmy.ml ⁨3⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
    It’s a joke, in case that wasn’t obvious.
    
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Berttheduck@lemmy.ml ⁨4⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
This is a big problem with medicine in general. Medicine is unfortunately very much an old white man’s club, it’s getting better slowly, but all the knowledge and the way it is taught comes from that old white guy standard.

Medical terminology is complex because medicine is complex. There is definitely an element of being part of an exclusive club but there is also communicating lots of information quickly and efficiently.

Frontotemporal dementia describes a specific set of symptoms and if you are medically trained tells you most everything you need to know about what is happening. As opposed to the patient is a bit confused or sees things sometimes which could be many different things.

The language and how diagnoses are communicated are really important, a good medic should tell the patient their diagnosis with the medical words but should explain what those mean in as much detail as the patient wants.

Most patients are able to understand dementia even if the frontotemporal bit doesn’t make sense to them.

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- over_clox@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  Official medical terminology tends to be based off of Latin. How many people do you know that speak Latin?
  
  Benadryl is the consumer friendly name for diphenhydramine hydrochloride. And yes I just pulled those letters out of my ass, I learned long ago that brand name Benadryl is expensive, but far cheaper alternatives exist.
  
  I guess that is sort of the opposite of my thought though, my point is that important things should be easier to remember, especially those with brain/memory issues. Just because I can remember and spell long and complicated words, doesn’t mean everyone else can…
  
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  - Squirrelsdrivemenuts@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨hour⁩ ago
    I would counter that the medical term is descriptive. Tell anyone with medical/medicine-related education someone has frontotemporal dementia and they know what is going on with the patient and what bodypart is affected. We can simplify with just “dementia” or a simpler term but you loose the specific meaning. Just like cancer is a two syllable simple word but a proper diagnosis includes way more information and has a more difficult term related. Equally, while the layman may prefer teflon and benadryl, the chemical/scientific name tells a trained person exactly what they are dealing with without having to look anything up, and does not suffer from different names across languages/borders. You cannot force simpler names as they will not be used in the medical/scientific community, so only if a disease is common enough to enter most peoples vocabulary will they come up with simpler terms or remember the term easily.
    
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  - Blue_Morpho@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
    There are too many terms. If you simplified every medical term you’d end up with too many words that were almost identical but meant very different conditions.
    
    I see it like thinking you could compress all possible number strings to a simpler number that’s easier to remember.
    
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unexposedhazard@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨4⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
Im sure there are plenty of abbreviations people make up for their disorders. While one person might be okay with it, others might see it as a slur of sorts. I worked with someone with down syndrome that called himself and his similarily affected friends “downies” but you can be fucking sure as hell that others might be very offended by that.

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- over_clox@lemmy.world ⁨4⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  That’s exactly what I mean, standardize some shorthand versions of mental/memory disorders where perhaps even the sufferer might even be able to remember, speak and/or spell it out, standardized across all of the medical community.
  
  Hey, the chemical industry had no problem making teflon a standardized name, everyone knows it by just those 2 syllables…
  
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