Psychotic symptoms in psychiatric inpatients with dementia of the Alzheimer and vascular types.
BACKGROUND
Demented patients often manifest psychotic symptoms including delusion, hallucination and misidentification. This report attempts to describe the frequencies and characteristics of such symptoms in psychiatric inpatients with dementia, and to identify the characteristics of dementia with and without psychotic symptoms.


METHODS
The study included 78 demented patients who were consecutively admitted to the psychiatric ward. Their psychotic symptoms were obtained from semistructured interview and the assessment using BEHAVE AD. Delusion and hallucination were rated as "present" if the descriptions were consistent with the definition of Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-III-R). Misidentification was defined individually.


RESULTS
There were 54 patients with DAT and 24 patients with VD. The frequency of psychotic symptoms in DAT and VD was 71.8%. The frequency of delusion in DAT and VD was 59.0%, misidentification, 33.3% and hallucination, 25.6%. Demented patients with psychotic symptoms were older (p = 0.037) than those without psychotic symptoms.


CONCLUSIONS
Psychotic symptoms are common in psychiatric inpatients with DAT and VD, the most common being delusional. Delusion of theft is the most common one. Demented patients with psychotic symptoms were older than those without.
Hwang
J P
JP
Department of Psychiatry, Veterans General Hospital-Taipei, Taiwan, R.O.C.
Yang
C H
CH
Tsai
S J
SJ
Liu
K M
KM
D000368:Aged; D000544:Alzheimer Disease / Q000523:psychology*; D015140:Dementia, Vascular / Q000523:psychology*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D011618:Psychotic Disorders / Q000209:etiology*