Municipal mental health programs are growing across the Philippines. But the country's fastest-growing neurodegenerative condition, dementia, isn't on the checklist. Here's what local governments can do with the tools that already exist.

The Philippine Mental Health Act was a turning point for psychiatric care. But dementia is a neurodegenerative disease with different brain mechanisms, different care pathways, and different family burdens. Nearly a million Filipino seniors are caught in that gap.

The belief that dementia erases the person, is based on a theory of identity we never examined properly. People with dementia retain emotional attunement, relational recognition, and subjective experience. Understanding that, changes how we care for them.

Dementia gets treated as a single disease when it's actually a label covering a dozen different biological processes. That confusion shapes how we diagnose, treat, and respond to cognitive decline, often in ways that cause harm.

Language fades in dementia, but communication doesn't have to end. Emotional tone, music, touch, and social scripts are preserved long after verbal fluency declines. Cognitive neuroscientist Amelia Enginco-Figueroa explains which brain systems remain intact and how caregivers can adapt their approach, to maintain real connection.

Agitation, aggression, wandering, and sundowning are the brain's best attempt to communicate something it can no longer say in words. Cognitive neuroscientist Amelia Enginco-Figueroa explains the neuroscience behind "difficult" dementia behaviors and how understanding what the brain is doing, changes how caregivers can respond.