senile dementia

Senile dementia - the mental illness starting mainly in old age due to brain atrophy and manifest themselves gradually increasing disintegration of mental activity to the extent of total dementia. The primary disorder is progressive and irreversible memory impairment.

Senile dementia - the most typical of the elderly (over 65 years), a disease characterized by progressive dementia, based on a total of atrophic process in the brain. The disease develops slowly and unobtrusively. The first changes can resemble the personality shifts characteristic of a natural aging process, but different expressions and exaggeration (egocentricity, callousness, greed, collecting useless things, etc.). Simultaneously disinhibited elementary biological needs (there are gluttony, sexual disinhibition); dominated by gloomy and irritable mood. In the initial stage of growing decline in memory and intellect that eventually reach the level of deep dementia and the collapse of all mental activity. This relatively long time remains orderly, but with time and she rudely upset turning into mindless babbling. Characterized by "the shift of the situation in the past": lost the memory of the last years of life and at the same time animated by memories of the distant past (patients are immersed in the memories of his youth, and in this perspective, assess what is happening). Characterized by sleep disturbance: a long nap combined with the night insomnia, which is accompanied by fussiness and aimless walking. At night there are often episodes of confusion ( "senile delirium"), when patients can not find his room or his bed. At home with little supervision are helpless, careless, forgetting to turn off gas, water, etc. In 10% of patients in the relatively early stages of the disease psychotic disorders can be observed - "senile psychoses" (nonsense damage, robbery, poisoning, at least - hallucinatory state).

With all kinds of senile psychosis is extremely important systematic nursing from the middle and junior medical staff. Patients need to provide a dietetic food, to monitor the regularity of physiological functions, purity skin. Psychotropic drugs (sonapaks, Chlorprothixenum, etaperazin) in small doses administered with the appearance of psychotic or gross behavioral disorders, sleep disorders.