My observation is that the personality stays for quite a
time. I always had the feeling that the victim was concious
of something terrible happening that they could not
understand. It must be enormously frightening. For many
years Alzheimer's was attributed to long term alcholism. It
turned out not to be but many of its victims turn to
drinking to help with the fear.
  In the last fifteen years I have helped care for two
cancer victims, one of whome died (the other will live
forever I hope), an Alzheimer's victim, and an ALS victim.
It does something to you to see people die slowly. If you
think there is no trouble in the world, just stand still for
half a minute, it will run right over you.

Same here.  My father's bouts with Cancer, Heart Congestion and
Emphysema were not as disturbing in comparison.  

Robert Vervoordt, MFA

I can see where your coming form and where your headed, and I think the guy
who replied, was throwing some kind of fit I read your original post and I
didnt see anything in there to merit his reaction, maybe hes had his head in
the developer too long, lol. Please continue to be curious, thats how most
of the things we take for granted came to be, including photography.

Brian.....................

If those who educated you did not fully explain to you how the scientific
method provides an approach to your question, I certainly cannot hope to
teach you that here.  Here is an example of the absurdity that results from
your approach:

Those who work in darkrooms die.  This outcome seems to be unrelated to the
number of years, frequency or duration of exposure or chemicals involved.
It appears just stepping into a darkroom is enough to link darkroom use and
death.

The data you seek to start the process of getting at your question is:
Photographers who have worked in darkrooms for 50 years:  how many of you
suffer dementia?  How many possess all of your faculties?  Then, and only
then, would you have data that would enable you to begin  to correlate 50
years of darkroom exposure and mental state. This, of course, assumes you
and your respondents have the same understanding of the term "dementia";
which is most unlikely unless you first spell out the definition you want
the respondents to use.

Even these data cannot be collected via seeking self reports from this
group. This is because those ex-darkroom workers suffering dementia are
unlikely to be using the Internet, let alone participating in this group.

There are two reasons I deplore what you did.  First and foremost, I am
certain there are people on this list who have already met their
responsibility of caring for a loved one who suffered one of the forms of
dementia.  To suggest on a whim that their hobby/profession may have
contributed to the suffering of the person they loved is nothing short of
reprehensible.  There are no data to even whisper the suggestion that they
may be guilty for the suffering of the person they cared for.  And if you
fail to comprehend that people DO make these connections, then your claim to
being a mental health professional is most doubtful.

The other reason is that your post gives every indication that mental health
research is little more than casting about in the wind for creating links
between causation and outcome.  Many of the statistical methods now used
(autocorrelation, multiple regression, factor analysis, analysis of
variance) were invented by those doing research in the behavioral sciences.
What we think we know and what we hope to know is and will be a result of a
disciplined approach to dissecting complex relationships among defined
variables and outcomes.

I cannot conceive of an educated mental health professional being unaware of
the implications of such behavior.

Another correlative group would be workers in hospital X-ray processing
labs: standing all day over large tanks of photochemicals with
nitrogen gas bursts carrying vapor and droplets of chemicals all over
hell and back.