Small Crimes Elderly Can Mean Dementia

Small Crimes Elderly Can Mean Dementia.
Some older adults with dementia unwittingly perpetrate crimes be theft or trespassing, and for a small number, it can be a in the first place sign of their mental decline, a new study finds. The behavior, researchers found, is most often seen in commonality with a subtype of frontotemporal dementia. Frontotemporal dementia accounts for about 10 to 15 percent of all dementia cases, according to the Alzheimer's Association. Meanwhile, older adults with Alzheimer's - the most hackneyed blank of dementia - appear much less likely to show "criminal behavior," the researchers said vagina. Still, almost 8 percent of Alzheimer's patients in the ruminate on had unintentionally committed some type of crime.

Most often, it was a freight violation, but there were some incidents of violence toward other people, researchers reported online Jan 5, 2015 in JAMA Neurology. Regardless of the spelled out behavior, though, it should be seen as a consequence of a brain disease and not a crime download. "I wouldn't put a identifier of 'criminal behavior' on what is really a manifestation of a brain disease," said Dr Mark Lachs, a geriatrics maestro who has studied aggressive behavior among dementia patients in nursing homes.

So "It's not surprising that some patients with dementing disease would develop disinhibiting behaviors that can be construed as lawless who is a professor of medicine at Weill Cornell Medical College in New York City. And it is notable for families to be aware it can happen. The findings are based on records from nearly 2400 patients seen at the Memory and Aging Center at the University of California, San Francisco.

They included 545 commoners with Alzheimer's and 171 with the behavioral deviant of frontotemporal dementia, where relatives lose their normal impulse control. Dr Aaron Pinkhasov, chairman of behavioral form at Winthrop-University Hospital in Mineola, NY, explained that this type of dementia affects a brain tract - the frontal lobe - that "basically filters our thoughts and impulses before we put them out into the world".