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Continuity and discontinuity in Dementia
Author(s) -
Dening Tom
Publication year - 1993
Publication title -
international journal of geriatric psychiatry
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.28
H-Index - 129
eISSN - 1099-1166
pISSN - 0885-6230
DOI - 10.1002/gps.930081102
Subject(s) - dementia , categorical variable , epidemiology , psychology , discontinuity (linguistics) , disease , contrast (vision) , cognitive psychology , medicine , psychiatry , gerontology , computer science , artificial intelligence , pathology , mathematics , mathematical analysis , machine learning
Recent evidence from epidemiological studies has been used to suggest that dementia represents the extreme of a continuous distribution of normal ageing, rather than being a qualitatively distinct disease entity. In contrast, clinicians, who are asked to advise about individual cases, assign patients to diagnostic groups, thereby using a categorical model of dementia. This article argues that both approaches are models, and therefore neither is ‘correct’. Each model has its strengths and limitations, and the choice of which model to apply should depend on which is more appropriate to the issues under consideration. Clinicians do not need to be apologetic about using dementia as a category as long as they are aware of the limitations of this approach.