Behavioral Disturbances of Dementia in Ambulatory Care Settings

Abstract

Behavioral disturbances are a primary reason elderly patients with dementia are admitted to long-term care facilities. Blackwood and colleagues found that 58% of 130 consecutive patients admitted to a nursing home because of a behavioral disorder had a principal diagnosis of dementia. Similarly, in a study of long-stay institutional care for persons with dementia in France, the author and colleagues found that 67% of 352 patients had been admitted because of a social or behavioral problem. Thus, outpatient management of behavioral disturbances would appear to play a central role in determining whether a patient with dementia can remain in the community.