The 66-year-old has announced he will retire from touring.
David Cassidy is opening up about the warning signs that led to his dementia diagnosis in a new interview with Dr. Phil McGraw.
Read: David Cassidy Reveals Battle With Dementia: 'I Was in Denial'
“When friends of yours or family members begin to say to you, ‘Remember, I just told you this two days ago?’ And there is no memory of it. That's when I began to be very concerned,” he said in an interview airing Wednesday.
Dr. Phil asked: "Was that was caused you to say, 'I need to go get myself checked?'"
"Oh my God, yes," he replied.
Dr. Phil told Inside Edition that Cassidy's mother and grandfather both died from dementia.
"He said from the time my mother was diagnosed until she died was seven years. He said I’m 2-and-a-half years in and I had it before I was diagnosed. So he said, 'I get it. I know where this is headed,'" Dr. Phil said.
Cassidy said watching his mother fade away was heartbreaking. He revealed that he told his own son, "I want you to promise me you'll find a way to let me go and don't let me live like that."
Cassidy became a teen heartthrob as Keith Partridge in The Partridge Family in the 1970s. Now 66, he has announced he will retire from touring.
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Dr. Phil also spoke to the singer about the recent shows that forced him to go public with his medical crisis.
“Certainly my dementia has contributed to the reason why I don't want to go out and I don't want to hear, 'Well, he looked like he was drunk or he looked like he was...' — I wasn't," he insisted.
“This is a good man and he's facing some difficult times right now," Dr. Phil told Inside Edition. "He said, 'I want to speak about this and raise awareness about this and get people's attention to it.'"
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