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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 ]
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 ...
Patients with Alzheimer's disease and other forms of dementia have been shown to exhibit impairment in executive functioning as well. [2] The effects of DES symptoms on the executive functions and working memory, such as attentiveness, planning and remembering recently learned things, are some of the earliest indicators of Alzheimer's disease ...
A new study demonstrates that depression may worsen memory decline, but one condition may also exacerbate the other. Experts note the pathology of depression and memory loss overlap within the brain.
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.