What is it about?

The nature of anxiety in dementia and the main differences between anxiety and depression from clinicians perspectives.

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Why is it important?

Our findings show that anxiety in patients with dementia is perhaps best understood as a reaction to loss and worries, and existential in nature. Care interventions can reduce or prevent anxiety symptoms in this population. However, when anxiety co-exists with depression it might be difficult to attenuate these symptoms through care measures alone. To better identify and treat the condition, valid dementia-specific anxiety-screening instruments are necessary.

Perspectives

Anxiety symptoms and disorders in patients with dementia are often overlooked by the health care professionals. This paper provides many examples of anxiety in patients with dementia as experieced by the clinicians, our participants. The finding of this paper that anxiety symptoms in coexistence with depression can be difficult to alleviate solely through care measures, is perhaps important in the management of anxiety in patients with dementia.

Ms Alka AG Goyal
Universitetet i Oslo

Read the Original

This page is a summary of: Clinicians’ experiences of anxiety in patients with dementia, Dementia, July 2016, SAGE Publications,
DOI: 10.1177/1471301216659770.
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