By the year 2025, that number is expected to rise to over 500,000.

In a bid to raise awareness and build community support, Alzheimer’s Australia has been running annual workshops – with one held in Armidale last Thursday.

Alzheimer’s Australia NSW CEO John Watkins said family carers play a vital role in supporting people living with dementia in the community.

“As the prevalence of dementia continues to increase rapidly, it has never been more important that family carers supporting people living with the disease are given the information and support necessary to enable them to provide the best care possible,” he said.

Armidale residents and carers Ellie and Warwick Browne attended Thursday’s workshop and said they were impressed with what was discussed.

“They’ve been talking about the causes, physiology and parts of the brain effected,” Mr Browne said.

“They also talk about diagnosis and the difficulty of diagnosis.

“Also the factors that predispose people to these conditions as well as the management side of it. Every case seems to be different.”

Mr Browne said he hoped these kinds of workshops would overtime help to destigmatise the issue.

“These events will hopefully allow more people to feel like they can access the help,” he said.

“You can’t imagine dealing with this without the support that we have.”

Mrs Browne said one of the elements of the workshop was meeting with other members of the community who are going through similar things.

“You can come to these things and tell them your problems and in the long run you realise sometimes others are worse off than you are,” she said.

“Support is essential and the [health and workshop] team here in Armidale have been a wonderful support all the way through.”

The pair said not only were the workshops great for people who have been working through the issue for a long time, but also a good place to start for people new to the issue or simply wanting to learn more about it.

“There are also people here who aren’t directly dealing with the issue but want to know more about it because they might have to in the future,” Mr Browne said.

Based in Coffs Harbour, Judy Bartholomew runs workshops in Northern Rivers, mid-North Coast and the New England. 

“We talk about what is dementia, we look at risk reduction, planning ahead and effective communication,” Ms Bartholomew said.