Aggressive behavior common among nursing home patients

Reported by Susan Aldridge, PhD, medical journalist

A survey of British care homes shows that there is a high incidence of challenging behavior on the part of people with dementia.
Dementia is not just about memory loss - it is also frequently accompanied by aggressive and difficult behavior. Of course, this is part of the illness but can still be upsetting for carers and staff in nursing homes. The UK Alzheimer's Society has carried out a survey of nearly 200 care homes and found just how widespread challenging behavior is.

They found that nearly three quarters of the homes had records of someone with dementia being verbally or physically aggressive in the last three months. And almost a quarter recorded more than ten such incidences. Thirty five per cent said that a member of staff had been injured as a result. The majority said their staff found such behavior upsetting and believed the problem to be even worse than official records suggested.

There are two ways to improve the situation, according to the Society's director of research, Dr Clive Ballard. Care home staff need more training in how to look after people with dementia - currently only one in ten has any kind of training like this. And there is a need to make the drug memantine - the only one licensed for the treatment of moderate to severe dementia - more widely available. It is hoped that the National Institute for Clinical Excellence will rule that the drug can be paid for by the National Health Service, reversing an earlier decision on this.

Source
The Journal of Quality Research in Dementia online April 2006

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