October is National Physical Therapy Month. As president of the American Physical Therapy Association (APTA), it gives me great pride to represent our profession and our 100,000-member physical therapists (PTs), physical therapist assistants (PTAs) and students.

It is common to hear “dementia” and “Alzheimer’s disease” used interchangeably, but they are not the same. Dementia is a general term that refers to symptoms that affect cognitive functions such as difficulty managing finances or making complex decisions, losing track of time, impaired speech or language skills, and repeating questions.