It’s a service that is seriously, desperately needed.

Memory Caregivers Support Group, a support group for caregivers and family of Alzheimer’s and Dementia patients founded by Phylis Cowart, Lee Ann Whitley, the director of Missions and JOY Ministry at Crawford Street United Methodist Church, and Walter Frazier, the director of Grace Christian Counseling, fills a void many people in this community are unaware of, and many others pray for.

According to the National Institute on Aging, Alzheimer’s disease is the most common cause of dementia among older adults. Dementia is the loss of cognitive functioning — thinking, remembering, and reasoning — and behavioral abilities to such an extent that it interferes with a person’s daily life and activities.

Alzheimer’s is an irreversible, progressive brain disorder that slowly destroys memory and thinking skills, and eventually the ability to carry out the simplest tasks. It is currently ranked as the sixth leading cause of death in the United States, and it ranges in severity from the mildest stage, when it is just beginning to affect a person’s functioning, to the most severe stage, when the person must depend completely on others for basic activities of daily living.

And one of the most damaging effects of Alzheimer’s is on families, which in the disease’s early stages are the patient’s first caregivers who try to deal, many times tragically, with helping a loved one cope with a disease that slowly reduces their abilities, even to the point where they are unable to recognize or remember their spouse, sibling, child or grandchildren.

Caring for an Alzheimer’s patient can be mentally taxing, because as humans it’s our nature to do all we can for our loved ones, even to the point of putting ourselves in physical and mental discomfort to help them.

As Phylis Cowart pointed out in her case with her mother, “My family had to intervene finally with me to get something to change, to get something done. You have to have some kind of support. I was trying to do it alone and any one of them would have helped me.”

That’s what makes Memory Caregivers so important. It gives people who have relatives with Alzheimer’s or Dementia someplace to turn to and an opportunity to share their concerns and experiences with others who have gone through the same experience.

And that’s something only they can appreciate.