DEMENTIA IS TABOO. THE WORD TRANSLATE IN TURKISH AS “BUNAK”, WHICH MEANS SOMEONE WHO HAS LOST HIS/HER MIND
Good morning, my name is Yashar Ismailoglu. Today is the 29th February 2016.[1]
I am 70 years old, and until recently I had been working with Walthamstow Forest Customer Service Center as an advisor. Previously I worked with Hackney, Islington, Harringate and other councils on a different capacity.
On one of the basis, I have been very active leading a formation of several Turkish, Cypriot and Kurdish community organisations, and most of the time doing analysis and writing projects to cater for the needs of education, welfare rights, employment, access to health services and youth programs for the Turkish and Kurdish speaking communities in London, in general Hackney.
I am the community builder, which I am proud of because of my work leading to the formation of community groups. In short, I have worked on both sides of the barriers, and there are issues, especially on health, that many communities are not aware of the limitations of the service provided, but I do not sit on the fence. Therefore, I’m still fighting to meet the essential needs of the Turkish, Cypriot and Kurdish communities.
After this long presentation about my active community background, I will like to talk about my experience with memory loss, or dementia.
Going back to 2012-2013, I was running the only memory group catering for the Turkish and Kurdish speaking people in the UK. This service was held at the Hackney community centre, in partnership with the Alzheimer Society. We had twenty-five active memberships and meetings twice a month, because dementia is a taboo or a stigma in the Turkish culture, I needed to be very careful what to the name the group. Otherwise, I would hit a wall from the start. Therefore, without mentioning the word dementia, which translates in Turkish “bunak”, which means, in short, someone who has lost his/her mind. The word now has been changed to Demans, in Turkish it is accepted widely as a medical condition, and could be discussed without fear or stigma.
There’s a very distinctive difference between the Turkish and Kurdish people living in diaspora such as London, and those back at home in South East Turkey due to available health services and awareness of this condition.
Coming up to my dementia project, they agreed with our users to name our memory group. You can see the naming of the service was problematic barrier that I had to overcome. Activities also play an important part in overcoming barriers.
Overcoming the inner barriers, first what we forget the taboo word “bunak” and alternatively we use the words “memory loss” due to the brain dying because of the age. At the beginning we did not use the word alzheimer’s illness, therefore the first couple of sessions we used a magic word “awareness”. We used awareness of different types of mental health, and how to access services.
