UMMS Affiliation
Department of Neurology; Department of Medicine, Division of Preventive and Behavioral Medicine
Publication Date
2017-11-01
Document Type
Article
Disciplines
Mental Disorders | Nervous System Diseases | Neurology | Preventive Medicine | Social and Behavioral Sciences | Translational Medical Research
Abstract
The goal of this article was to look at the problem of Alzheimer's disease (AD) through the lens of a socioecological resilience-thinking framework to help expand our view of the prevention and treatment of AD. This serious and complex public health problem requires a holistic systems approach. We present the view that resilience thinking, a theoretical framework that offers multidisciplinary approaches in ecology and natural resource management to solve environmental problems, can be applied to the prevention and treatment of AD. Resilience thinking explains a natural process that occurs in all complex systems in response to stressful challenges. The brain is a complex system, much like an ecosystem, and AD is a disturbance (allostatic overload) within the ecosystem of the brain. Resilience thinking gives us guidance, direction, and ideas about how to comprehensively prevent and treat AD and tackle the AD epidemic.
Keywords
Adaptability, Allostasis, Allostatic load, Allostatic overload, Complex system, Panarchy, Resilience, Resilience thinking, Transformability
Rights and Permissions
Copyright 2017 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Inc. on behalf of the Alzheimer’s Association. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/ 4.0/).
DOI of Published Version
10.1016/j.trci.2017.08.001
Source
Alzheimers Dement (N Y). 2017 Sep 12;3(4):498-506. doi: 10.1016/j.trci.2017.08.001. eCollection 2017 Nov. Link to article on publisher's site
Journal/Book/Conference Title
Alzheimer's and dementia (New York, N. Y.)
Related Resources
PubMed ID
29124107
Repository Citation
Pomorska, Grazyna and Ockene, Judith K., "A general neurologist's perspective on the urgent need to apply resilience thinking to the prevention and treatment of Alzheimer's disease" (2017). Open Access Articles. 3247.
https://escholarship.umassmed.edu/oapubs/3247
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 License.
Included in
Mental Disorders Commons, Nervous System Diseases Commons, Neurology Commons, Preventive Medicine Commons, Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons, Translational Medical Research Commons