Open AccessHigher mental functioning in dementia: A status assessment
Author(s) -
Rajesh Kumar,
Parashar Koirala,
Sunil Kumar Tiwari
Publication year - 2015
Publication title -
journal of geriatric mental health
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
eISSN - 2395-3322
pISSN - 2348-9995
DOI - 10.4103/2348-9995.161382
Subject(s) - dementia , mental status examination , cognitive skill , verbal fluency test , cognition , psychiatry , psychology , medicine , clinical psychology , fluency , neuropsychology , disease , mathematics education
Background: Of the higher mental functions, certain deteriorate earlier than others. The relative deterioration of the different higher mental functions in dementia patients would be of interest to investigate. Aim: We intended to study the status of higher mental functioning in dementia patients. Materials and Methods: Household screening of a randomly selected ward, Musahebganj of urban Lucknow generated 1,216 elderly people aged >55 years. After taking the informed consent to participate in the study, all the subjects were screened using the Mini Mental Status Examination (MMSE) for cognitive disorders. Age and education specific cut-off criteria were used to find out MMSE positive subjects. MMSE positive subjects were assessed in detail using the Cambridge Examination for Mental disorder in the Elderly-Revised instrument. Result: Fifty patients were diagnosed to have dementia as per the international classification of diseases-10 criteria. The study demonstrated that the higher mental functioning especially visual reasoning, ideational fluency, and memory are maximally affected in dementia patients.Conclusions: The deterioration in higher functioning is usually seen in dementia. The mental functioning relates with each other and is interrelated, leading to overall deterioration