TY - JOUR
T1 - The meanings of delusions in dementia
T2 - A preliminary study
AU - Cohen-Mansfield, Jiska
AU - Golander, Hava
AU - Ben-Israel, Joshua
AU - Garfinkel, Doron
N1 - Funding Information:
This work was funded in part by Marie Curie International grant #044946 of the European Commission and by the Israel Science Foundation grant 1067/07.
PY - 2011/8/30
Y1 - 2011/8/30
N2 - One of the common symptoms of dementia is delusions. Due to a biological conceptualization of the behaviors represented as delusions, these are classified as psychotic symptoms. This is a qualitative and quantitative study aiming to describe the delusions experienced by older persons with dementia and the context of occurrence, and to elucidate their etiology. Participants were 74 nursing home residents aged 65 and over, diagnosed with dementia, from nine nursing homes in Israel. Participants with delusions were found to have significantly more difficulties in performing ADLs, and poorer vision and hearing. Based on assessment using the BEHAVE-AD, six categories of delusions were examined: 1 One's house is not one's home, 2. Theft, 3. Danger, 4. Abandonment, 5. Misidentification, and 6. Other non-paranoid. Common themes appeared across delusions including reality, disorientation, re-experience of past events, loneliness and insecurity, boredom, and trigger. Current results suggest that delusions may not represent psychotic symptoms for most participants, because they sometimes represented reality, or were neither firm nor incontrovertible. Thus, utilizing the term delusion relegates the person's behavior to the domain of severe psychiatric phenomena and precludes understanding its true meaning.
AB - One of the common symptoms of dementia is delusions. Due to a biological conceptualization of the behaviors represented as delusions, these are classified as psychotic symptoms. This is a qualitative and quantitative study aiming to describe the delusions experienced by older persons with dementia and the context of occurrence, and to elucidate their etiology. Participants were 74 nursing home residents aged 65 and over, diagnosed with dementia, from nine nursing homes in Israel. Participants with delusions were found to have significantly more difficulties in performing ADLs, and poorer vision and hearing. Based on assessment using the BEHAVE-AD, six categories of delusions were examined: 1 One's house is not one's home, 2. Theft, 3. Danger, 4. Abandonment, 5. Misidentification, and 6. Other non-paranoid. Common themes appeared across delusions including reality, disorientation, re-experience of past events, loneliness and insecurity, boredom, and trigger. Current results suggest that delusions may not represent psychotic symptoms for most participants, because they sometimes represented reality, or were neither firm nor incontrovertible. Thus, utilizing the term delusion relegates the person's behavior to the domain of severe psychiatric phenomena and precludes understanding its true meaning.
KW - Alzheimer's disease
KW - Etiology
KW - Old age
KW - Psychosis
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=80051706027&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1016/j.psychres.2011.05.022
DO - 10.1016/j.psychres.2011.05.022
M3 - ???researchoutput.researchoutputtypes.contributiontojournal.article???
AN - SCOPUS:80051706027
SN - 0165-1781
VL - 189
SP - 97
EP - 104
JO - Psychiatry Research
JF - Psychiatry Research
IS - 1
ER -