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
Commonly seen symptoms of Lewy Body Dementia:
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
Cognitive or Thinking Problems:
- 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
See: Non-medical Treatment for any Brain Injury and Dementia