[saltcured]

Fast forward individual lives, and see how many elderly are now running into a similar Catch 22 with the increasing rates of dementia. Our cultural fixation with individualism and agency leaves a lot of folks in a gray area where they lose their ability to manage their own lives but are not yet clear cases for the state to protect.

During this limbo, people are at great risk for exploitation as well as avoidable catastrophes due to simply being invisible during their decline. Rather than willful neglect, there is simply nobody there with assigned duty to steer folks on the least unhappy path.

Ironically, people with mental illnesses appear to be much more likely to develop dementia too. So they can experience multiple flavors of this tragedy.