Dementia and Aging: Lewy Body Dementia

Primary signs of Lewy Body Dementia:

Initial signs are symptoms relating to the frontal brain area: Decision making, attention problems, problem solving, thinking and processing
Initial signs are symptoms relating to the parietal brain area: Visual spatial, visual perceptual, visual constructional problems
May be the pre-cursor to Parkinson’s Disease
Mental illness or frank psychosis is immediately evident

Emotional Symptoms:

Very suspicious of everyone, accusatory of others: Taking things, trying to hurt themselves
The thought that everyone is talking about them
They stay home more, uncomfortable in social situations, not liking crowds of people
More agitated, restless, uncomfortable
Having crazy thoughts they don’t want to talk about
Unpredictable emotions, feelings do not fit the situation
They can’t handle things in life, easily upset
Deep depression, nothing matters
Too much into fantasy, living in the movies, living inside themselves
Empowered by God, visual hallucinations seeing God, auditory hallucinations, conversations with God that are real to them

Problems drawing and copying designs
Distorted perception, handwriting may change
Visual perception problems that may affect balance and driving
Difficulty adding or calculating numbers
Cannot find the word they want to say , problems of word retrieval
Sequential learning, difficulty learning something new that has steps to it
Attending to everything around them, continually distracted by anything novel
Cannot complete thoughts or conversations, change topics often
Problem solving difficult, using the same solution that does not work
Cannot see a problem about to happen, behavior and consequences
Thinking not logical, not processing things
Misinterpretation of conversation, confused with directions
Rigid thinking, right or wrong, no gray or in between
Not flexible, cannot shift to new thought, shift plans if things do not work out
Distracted by every noise and sound in their environment
They hear every noise