Awareness of the COVID-19 Outbreak and Resultant Depressive Tendencies in Patients with Severe Alzheimer's Disease.
J Alzheimers Dis
; 77(2): 539-541, 2020.
Article
in English
| MEDLINE | ID: covidwho-760838
ABSTRACT
The ongoing coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has substantially affected patients with dementia and their caregivers. However, we found not all Alzheimer's disease (AD) patients were afraid of COVID-19 infection. Therefore, we investigated the association between rate of awareness of COVID-19 and depressive tendency in AD. 126 consecutive outpatients with AD were enrolled in this study from May 25, on the day when the declaration of emergency was lifted in Japan, through June 30, 2020. In addition to routine psychological tests, the participants were asked the following two questions "Do you know COVID-19?" and "Why are you wearing a face mask?". Moderate to severe AD patients were found to have a low COVID-19 recognition rate and did not fully understand why they were wearing face masks. In addition, because they did not understand the seriousness of the COVID-19 outbreak, their Geriatric Depression Scale scores were also substantially lower. These results may appear to simply indicate that people with severe dementia are unaware of current events. However, these results provide insights into how to care for patients with dementia and how to allocate the time and support of our limited staff during the COVID-19 outbreak.
Keywords
Full text:
Available
Collection:
International databases
Database:
MEDLINE
Main subject:
Pneumonia, Viral
/
Awareness
/
Mental Competency
/
Coronavirus Infections
/
Pandemics
/
Alzheimer Disease
/
Patient Care
Type of study:
Diagnostic study
/
Observational study
/
Prognostic study
/
Qualitative research
Topics:
Long Covid
Limits:
Aged
/
Female
/
Humans
/
Male
Country/Region as subject:
Asia
Language:
English
Journal:
J Alzheimers Dis
Journal subject:
Geriatrics
/
Neurology
Year:
2020
Document Type:
Article
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