Objective: To observe the frequency of various psychiatric disorders (depressive disorders, anxiety state and paraphrenic-paranoid disorders).
Patients and methods: This study includes the 'cases' of dementia detected in an epidemiological field study done door-to-door, double phased and including non-institutionalized persons aged over 69 years in a rural area. All diagnoses were done by CAMDEX and on these criteria.
Results: Depressive disorder was diagnosed in 26.5% studied, paraphrenic or paranoid disorder in 14% and anxiety state in 6.5%. Depression and paraphrenic-paranoid disorder were not associated with the severity of the dementia, whilst anxiety state was more commonly seen in mild dementia. Paraphrenic-paranoid disorders were commoner in women than in men.
Conclusion: The considerable prevalence of other psychiatric diagnoses in persons with dementia shows that non-cognitive symptoms are common in these patients.