[Incidence and importance of "non-cognitive" symptoms in dementia of the Alzheimer type: productive psychotic symptoms, depressive disorders and behavioral disorders]

Abstract

A semi-structured interview was administered to the closest relatives of 50 patients with presenile or senile dementia of the Alzheimer type. The disturbances most frequently reported were: wandering/pacing (56%, cumulative percentage), aggressive behavior (44%) and - significantly related to more severe stages of dementia - apathy/loss of drive (58%), eating disturbances (46%) and disturbances of the sleep-waking cycle (32%). Depressive symptoms were observed in 58% of the patients, preferentially in the early stages of illness with preserved insight. Signs of paranoid delusions (46%), delusional misidentification (34%), visual (32%) and auditory hallucinations (16%) were encountered temporarily in a large number of patients. The importance of "non-cognitive" symptoms in Alzheimer's disease is underlined by their subjective significance for the caregivers.