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Geriatric psychiatry, also known as geropsychiatry, psychogeriatrics or psychiatry of old age, is a branch of medicine and a subspecialty of psychiatry dealing with the study, prevention, and treatment of neurodegenerative, cognitive impairment, and mental disorders in people of old age.
Neurocognitive disorders include delirium, mild neurocognitive disorders, and major neurocognitive disorder (also known as dementia). They are defined by deficits in cognitive ability that are acquired (as opposed to developmental), typically represent decline, and may have an underlying brain pathology. [ 1 ]
The Confusion Assessment Method (CAM) is a diagnostic tool developed to allow physicians and nurses to identify delirium in the healthcare setting. [1] It was designed to be brief (less than 5 minutes to perform) and based on criteria from the third edition-revision of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-III-R).
In contrast to major depression, dementia is a progressive neurodegenerative syndrome involving a pervasive impairment of higher cortical functions resulting from widespread brain pathology. [7] A significant overlap in cognitive and neuropsychological dysfunction in dementia and pseudodementia patients increases the difficulty in diagnosis.
Delirium can be confused with multiple psychiatric disorders or chronic organic brain syndromes because of many overlapping signs and symptoms in common with dementia, depression, psychosis, etc. [4] [5] Delirium may occur in persons with existing mental illness, baseline intellectual disability, or dementia, entirely unrelated to any of these ...
294.1x Dementia due to Huntington's disease (coded 294.1 in the DSM-IV) 294.1x Dementia due to Pick's disease (coded 290.10 in the DSM-IV) 294.1x Dementia due to Creutzfeldt–Jakob disease (coded 290.10 in the DSM-IV) 294.1x Dementia due to ... [Indicate the general medical condition not listed above] (coded 294.1 in the DSM-IV) 294.8 Dementia NOS
Educating the caregiver about depression in dementia is of primary importance in addressing the problem. Caregivers need to understand the need for structure and comfort in the patient's daily activities, as well as the importance of including activities that the patient finds enjoyable and of trying to convey a sense of pleasure themselves.
Dementia, however, can present early in its disease course with depressive symptoms, meaning that this association could actually be reflecting that dementia causes late life depression. [23] Studies that have directly tried to determine whether depression is an independent risk factor for dementia have led to inconclusive results.