Dementia treatments
Dementia information
In the UK, people living with certain types of dementia can be prescribed treatments to help manage their symptoms.
These include medicines that can help memory and thinking, mood, or aggression or agitation.
Almost everyone with dementia will experience some degree of changes in mood, such as depression, anxiety, agitation and aggression.
These symptoms are often experienced by people in the later stages of dementia. This may be linked to when they start to find it harder to communicate.
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Medicines that can help memory and thinking
In the UK, there are four medicines available on the NHS that can help memory and thinking.
These are known as symptomatic treatments. Find out more below.
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Donepezil, rivastigmine and galantamine
People with mild to moderate Alzheimer's disease or dementia with Lewy bodies might benefit from taking a drug called a cholinesterase inhibitor.
There are three cholinesterase inhibitors available to treat mild to moderate Alzheimer's disease or dementia with Lewy bodies:
- donepezil (Aricept)
- rivastigmine (Exelon)
- galantamine (Reminyl)
These medicines do not stop Alzheimer's or dementia with Lewy bodies from getting worse, but they may help some people manage their symptoms better than they would without treatment.
Some people with Alzheimer's or dementia with Lewy bodies find their symptoms improve by taking a cholinesterase inhibitor. Others may not notice an effect.
Doctors will continue to prescribe one of these drugs as symptoms get worse, so long as it is safe and suitable to do so.
These medicines come in different forms, like tablets, liquids or patches. This means there are choices if swallowing is difficult or if another form is easier for you.
A doctor, nurse or pharmacist can help you find the one that suits you best. The table below shows the options for each medicine.
| Medicine | Pill | Dissolvable tablet | Liquid | Patch |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Donepezil | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | |
| Rivastigmine | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | |
| Galantamine | ✓ | ✓ |
Dissolvable tablets may melt in the mouth or be dissolvable in water.
Memantine
Memantine, also known as Ebixa or Axura, is a medicine recommended for people with moderate or severe Alzheimer’s disease.
It may be used for people with moderate Alzheimer's if cholinesterase inhibitors don't help or are not suitable.
People with moderate or severe Alzheimer's disease are sometimes prescribed a cholinesterase inhibitor and memantine together.
People with moderate or severe Alzheimer’s disease are sometimes offered both a cholinesterase inhibitor and memantine to take together. Research has found that this can offer more effective help with symptoms than using one of the medications alone.
Memantine is also available in a few different forms. This means there are choices if swallowing is difficult or if another form is easier for you.
A doctor, nurse or pharmacist can help you find the one that suits you best. The table below shows the options for memantine.
| Medicine | Pill | Dissolvable tablet | Liquid | Patch |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Memantine | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
Medicines that can help movement problems in dementia with Lewy bodies
There are currently no treatments that can reverse the brain cell damage that causes dementia with Lewy bodies (DLB).
A Parkinson’s treatment called levodopa may be prescribed for movement problems in DLB. However, levodopa can cause or worsen visual hallucinations. If this occurs, it’s important to tell your doctor as soon as possible. Physiotherapy may also be prescribed for people with DLB to help with their movement problems.
A drug called clonazepam may help ease rapid eye movement (REM) sleep behaviour disorder. This is a symptom of DLB that causes people to act out their dreams, meaning that people may hurt themselves or others while they are asleep.
Medicines that can help vascular dementia
There are currently no treatments that can reverse the brain cell damage that causes vascular dementia.
However, a doctor may review the medications you are currently taking.
They may offer new medicines or monitor current prescriptions, such as statins, that could help to protect blood vessels from further damage.
A doctor may also advise making healthy lifestyle changes, such as stopping smoking.
Widely available Alzheimer’s treatments do not help with symptoms of vascular dementia. However, they may help people who have both Alzheimer’s and vascular dementia at the same time. This is called ‘mixed dementia’.
If you’ve been diagnosed with mixed dementia, you can discuss treatment options with your doctor.
Medicines that can help depression in people with dementia
People who had depression or anxiety before developing dementia may benefit from continuing to take antidepressant medicines. However, some antidepressants are not recommended for people who did not have depression before their dementia symptoms began. In these situations, your doctor may offer other supportive or complementary therapies instead.
There are different types of antidepressants. Your doctor will be able to advise you if an antidepressant could help, and which type would be best for you.
Someone may also be prescribed a complementary therapy to help with low mood.
Antipsychotic drugs
If someone with dementia is distressed, complementary therapies may help them feel better in themselves. However, if these have not worked or are not available and someone is very distressed, they may be offered an antipsychotic drug.
A doctor will prescribe these drugs for a short time only. Anyone with dementia taking an antipsychotic drug should have regular check-ins with their doctor to talk about any side effects.
Are dementia treatments effective?
Symptomatic treatments help alleviate the impact dementia can have on daily life. They can stabilise or improve a person’s symptoms, like thinking and memory problems, for some time and help them to maintain their ability to carry out some daily activities.
However, these treatments do not work well for everybody.
Some people may only feel a benefit for a short amount of time, while others may find the treatments do not help them at all. This is because every person’s experience of dementia is unique.
Unfortunately, symptomatic treatments cannot stop the diseases that cause dementia from progressing, so people will continue to get worse over time. This is because these drugs cannot fix damage to brain cells that has already happened or stop further damage from happening.
That's why ongoing research and the projects we fund are so important. Research is the only path to find a way to slow dementia down and one day find a cure.
Research is also focused on improving the way dementia is diagnosed. Current treatments can only be prescribed for people living with dementia once they have seen a doctor and have a diagnosis.
The brain changes that cause dementia can start happening around 15 to 20 years before symptoms start to appear, and it is when symptoms appear that a person might seek a diagnosis. This means that people receiving the available symptomatic treatments are often already living with moderate to severe dementia symptoms.
To make real progress for people in future, it will be important to be able to diagnose dementia at much earlier stages, before noticeable symptoms appear, and research is finding ways to do this.
Find out more
You can find out more about current diagnosis and treatments for each type of dementia on the following pages:
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Alzheimer's Research UK has a wide range of information about dementia. Order booklets or download them from our online form.
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Dementia information
Read more about treatments for dementia, including information on treating depression, anxiety and agitation and for information on antipsychotics.
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PDF, 5.82 MB, 15 pages
This information was updated in April 2026 and is due for review in April 2028. It was written by Alzheimer's Research UK's Information Services team with input from lay and expert reviewers. Please get in touch if you'd like a referenced copy.
This information is produced with support from The Perfume Shop who had no input into the content.
