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A four-part documentary series Where is Wendy Williams? aired on Lifetime over the weekend, putting on display Williams’ guardianship and ongoing health struggles.
Williams’ team announced Thursday that the radio personality and host of The Wendy Williams Show was diagnosed with primary progressive aphasia and frontotemporal dementia (FTD). Aphasia is a disorder that impacts language and a person’s ability to communicate, and FTD is a form of dementia impacting the parts of the brain that affect personality, behavior and language, according to MayoClinic. FTD is the same diagnosis actor Bruce Willis is currently facing, after initially being diagnosed with aphasia in 2022.
“Today Wendy Williams’ team shared that the former talk show host is living with primary progressive aphasia & frontotemporal dementia. We hope publicly sharing her diagnosis helps break down stigma and enables others facing dementia feel less alone.” tweeted the Alzheimer’s Association.
The press release acknowledges behavior that’s stricken up public concern over the last few years. In October 2017, she fainted on air while filming a Halloween-themed episode of The Wendy Williams Show. In March 2019, she revealed that she was struggling with alcoholism and living in a sober house – an ongoing battle, according to the Lifetime documentary.
Following her divorce, the cancellation of her talk show, and a financial guardianship placed by Wells Fargo in 2022, speculations about her health continued, with fans posting online videos in which Williams appears to be incoherent.
“Over the past few years, questions have been raised at times about Wendy’s ability to process information and many have speculated about Wendy’s condition, particularly when she began to lose words, act erratically at times, and have difficulty understanding financial transactions,” reads the statement.
Women are twice as likely to develop dementia than men, but Black women specifically experience the intersection of gender and racial vulnerabilities, with Black individuals two to three times more likely to develop dementia than white people, according to the Southern Illinois University School of Medicine.
There are about 55 million people with dementia worldwide and every year, there are 10 million more cases, according to the World Health Organization. FTD is a rarer condition, affecting an estimated 50,000 to 60,000 in the U.S., with 60% of those with FTD between the ages of 46 and 64, reports Alzheimers.gov. Williams is 59.
Hot topic: Race and dementia
Several studies have explored the link between race, racism and dementia. A 2020 study by the Boston University School of Medicine compared responses from 59,000 participants age 21 to 69 and found that women with the highest incidences of racist aggressions were almost three times more likely to experience lower subjective cognitive function (SCF) and worsening confusion or memory loss than those with less racist experiences in their daily lives. Women who experienced institutional racism also faced a 2.66 times rate of SCF.
“Everyone is affected by stressors, but African Americans have the additional heavy burden of the stress of racism,” senior author of the study Lynn Rosenberg told Inverse in July 2020. in DATE. “Given the large literature documenting the harmful health effects of stressors, it should not be a leap for people to realize that racism has harmful health effects as well.”
Dementia is an umbrella term for issues in cognitive abilities, memory, thinking, and behavior, often used jointly when discussing Alzhiemer’s, though the two are not synonymous. Alzhiemer’s is the most common cause of dementia, a neurodegenerative disorder that affects memory and cognition, according to the UCLA David Geffen School of Medicine.
Alzheimer’s poses a unique struggle for Black people in the U.S. because while Black Americans are more likely to develop the disease, they are less likely to be diagnosed correctly, and face additional barriers to accessing the necessary treatment due to bias in the medical system, reports the Associated Press.
“But because of this structural racism that creates poor access to health, medication, housing, those who experience racism and discrimination are not provided a pathway to lower their risk,” Dr. Carl V. Hill, chief diversity, equity and inclusion officer of the Alzheimer’s Association told the Associated Press in 2023.
Almost 14% of Black individuals over 65 have Alzheimer’s or other dementias, compared to 12% of Latinos and 10% of white people in the same age group, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data. It’s expected that 14 million Americans will develop Alzheimer’s Disease by 2060.
The economic effects of dementia for Black Americans reached $71.6 billion in 2012, including $5.5 billion in medical costs, $1.3 billion in adult day care in non-institutional settings, and $14.6 billion in nursing homes, according to a 2013 report by the African American Network Against Alzheimer’s. Per the report, almost half of these costs are concentrated in southern states.
What’s next for Wendy
The Wendy Williams show ran for 13 seasons, ending in 2022. In Where is Wendy Williams?, which was filmed in 2022 and 2023, Williams’ makes clear her desire to return to television, though behavior displayed in the documentary suggests that either alcohol or dementia has impacted her mental cognizance.
In one scene, a producer asks Williams if she wanted to go to the Oscars that weekend.
“What’s Oscars?” Williams responded, confused.
According to Williams’ family, she is currently in an inpatient treatment facility for cognitive care.
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