Behavioral Challenges of Alzheimer's Disease
Learn What can Make This Disease Difficult to Manage
Mar 29, 2009
As the neurons and synapses are lost and the tangles build up in the brain, mental disorders become ever more prevalent in an Alzheimer’s patient.
During the second stage of Alzheimer's disease, referred to as moderate dementia, several common neuropsychiatric manifestations can take place. These thinking and behavior problems have names that are foreign to most non-medical people.
Alzheimer’s Disease Comes with Behavioral Challenges
Below are explanations of four of the most common behavioral challenges that family and friends may encounter with Alzheimer’s patients.
Common behaviors include wandering, sundowning, labile affect, and illusionary misidentification. The stress created by these behavioral symptoms is profound to everyone involved.
Wandering is just what it sounds like. Someone with Alzheimer's disease is prone to wander and become disoriented when he can not remember how he came to be in a place. Moreover, he doesn't recognize where he is. When a patient wanders off unattended, the behavior is called elopement.
Since elopement is usually a combination of wandering and sundowning it occurs mostly at night. The situation is critical because the person is often incapable of taking even elementary steps to be safe or find his way back. Search and rescue teams are often called in and enormous resources are consumed to find the dementia patient.
Sundowning, aka sundown syndrome, involves abnormal occurrences in the body's internal biological 24 hour cycle. The clockwork cells are located in the hypothalamus area of the brain which Alzheimer's disease attacks. When sundowning, a person becomes abnormally upset, suspicious, and demanding. They also suffer from audio and visual delusions.
Two More Types of Behavioral Challenges of Alzheimer’s
Labile affect is sometimes called emotional lability. Alzheimer's patients break out in uncontrollable laughter that goes on for several minutes or burst out crying for no apparent reason. Often, the episodes are not indicative of their true mood. The situation is frustrating to the patient and often leads to them avoiding social situations.
Illusionary misidentification syndrome covers a bunch of delusional disorders associated with neurological illness. The four variations of this syndrome all center around a belief that the identity of someone, an object or location has been altered or changed.
All these behavioral challenges are related to the brain damage wrought by Alzheimer's disease. Handling such a wide spectrum of behaviors often requires an experienced care giver's complete attention and skill.
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References;
USNews.com: Health
UC Davis Department of Neurology
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