TITLE:
Personality change in older adults with dementia: Occurrence and association with severity of cognitive impairment
AUTHORS:
Edward Helmes, Maria C. Norton, Truls Østbye
KEYWORDS:
Personality Change; Dementia; Affect; Longitudinal Study
JOURNAL NAME:
Advances in Aging Research,
Vol.2 No.1,
February
22,
2013
ABSTRACT: Personality change is
among criteria for the diagnosis of dementia. We examine first whether
personality changes are related to severity of cognitive impairment in a linear
or an inverted-U fashion in 1132 demented older people from the Canadian Study
of Health and Aging (CSHA) and 921 unimpaired older people. The proportion with
reported change was larger for all measures in the demented group than in the
cognitively unimpaired group, and was more consistent with a linear
increase in personality change with increasing cognitive impairment than with
an inverted-U relationship, as seen in only one variable. In our second
(longitudinal) study, we evaluate which aspects of personality change most in
dementia; changes in mood and an exaggeration of existing traits were the variables
most closely related to the development of dementia.