Biến chứng tâm thần rất phổ biến ở tất cả các dementias, là tốt nhất khái niệm như các bệnh tâm thần kinh. Các biến chứng thường gặp nhất liên quan đến rối loạn cảm xúc (trầm cảm, lo âu, lãnh đạm, lability tình cảm, khó chịu, và phởn phơ), rối loạn tâm thần (ảo tưởng và ảo giác) | 11 Psychiatric Complications in Dementia Daniel Weintraub and Anton P. Porsteinsson INTRODUCTION Psychiatric complications are very common in all dementias which are best conceptualized as neuropsychiatric diseases. The most common complications involve disturbances in emotions depression anxiety apathy affective lability irritability and euphoria psychosis delusions and hallucinations and behavior restlessness and aggression . These complications are quite heterogeneous and can be difficult to categorize because of fluctuations in symptoms over time and the frequent occurrence of subsyndromal symptoms. Psychiatric co-morbidity is very common in dementia and most of these symptoms or syndromes are associated with excess functional disability. In addition psychiatric disturbances in the context of dementia are associated with poorer outcomes decreased quality of life increased institutionalization and caregiver distress. Our understanding of the etiology and pathophysiology of behavioral and psychological signs and symptoms in dementia is limited. Screening instruments are available to assist in clinical evaluation and there are a variety of treatment options both psychopharmacological and psychosocial. This chapter covers the neurobehavioral complications of common dementias not covered elsewhere in this book specifically Alzheimer s disease AD vascular dementia VaD and frontotemporal dementia FTD . EPIDEMIOLOGY Emotional Disturbances Depression is the best studied of the emotional changes occurring in AD but the relationship between depression and AD is complex and research findings on the epidemiology of depression in AD have been inconclusive. There is evidence that both early- and late-onset depression frequently precede the clinical presentation of dementia 1 suggesting that depression either is a risk factor for or a prodromal phase of dementia in some cases. Vascular depression is a term that has been coined to describe nondemented depressed patients with .
