Psychiatric conditions tend to predate a dementia diagnosis and persist after the diagnosis, according to a new study.
The study examined the risk patterns of psychiatric disorders including anxiety, depression, sleep disorders and psychotic disorders before and after people were diagnosed with dementia. The report was published Tuesday in JAMA Network Open.
Researchers looked at data from 796,505 participants with and without dementia. The scientists found that the onset of psychiatric disorders was higher in people with dementia compared to people without it. That risk rose three years before the people were diagnosed with dementia. It peaked a week after the diagnosis and then fell.
The mean age of the participants when they were diagnosed with dementia was 80.2 years old. Of the participants, 56.4% were female. Of all the participants studied, 209,245 had dementia and 587,260 didn’t have dementia.
“Among patients with dementia, markedly elevated use of psychiatric medications was observed in the year leading up to the dementia diagnosis and peaked six months after diagnosis,” the authors wrote.
The researchers also assessed medication use among people with and without dementia who received a psychiatric disorder diagnosis over the study span. Two years before being diagnosed, 15.9% of people with dementia used antidepressants compared to 7.9% without dementia. At six months after being diagnosed, 29.1% with dementia took antidepressants while 9.7% without dementia took the medications. Three years after being diagnosed, 16.4% of people with dementia were on antidepressants, while 6.9% of people without dementia took the medications.
New-onset psychiatric disorders were more common among people with dementia both before and after they were diagnosed with the disease, especially in those with Lewy body dementia and frontotemporal dementia, the report finds.
The findings show that it’s important to put interventions in place to prevent and manage psychiatric conditions in people with dementia across various stages of the disease. It’s important to manage symptoms as dementia progresses because they can impact overall health, the researchers wrote.
