A recent report links the criminal behavior of older adult to a degenerative brain disease called dementia or Alzheimer's disease.
Criminal behavior in older adults which include theft, sexual advances, trespassing and even traffic violations may be a sign of dementia, a degenerative brain disease in older people, says a research. In fact, according to Dr. Georges Naasan from the Memory and Aging Center and Department of Neurology at the University of California, San Francisco, there were reported first time offenders among older adults who committed petty crimes and these can be associated with the presence of dementia.
For the research, they reviewed the medical records of people who have Alzheimer's disease from 1999 to 2012. A total of 2,397 patients were studied and they reviewed the notes on whether these patients have committed crimes. Word entries like arrest, DUI, shoplift and violence were used to trace their criminal records. A total of 204 (8.5%) patients qualified for their research.
Criminal behaviors were often linked to behavioral variant frontotemporal dementia (bvFTD) or primary progressive aphasia (PPA), a type of language-deteriorating dementia. From the people who committed crimes, 64 of them have bvFTD, 42 had Alzheimer's and the others had other types of dementia.
Furthermore, the researchers found out more than 6.4% of the group with criminal offenses that have bvFTD manifested physical or verbal violence during the duration of their illness. However, only 3.4% of patients with PPA and 2% of those with Alzheimer's disease showed those manifestations. For sexual advances, these were higher in men than in women. Urinating in public was higher in men too.
Dr. Naasan reiterated that family history of the patient plays a major role in the criminal behavior. If they have a family history of neurodegenerative disease, there might be a link between them committing petty crimes and an underlying problem in their brain.
"However, most of these diseases are 'sporadic,' meaning that they occur for no identifiable genetic cause and it is difficult to predict. In general, an early detection of changes in personality, deviation from what constituted a 'norm' for a particular individual, should prompt an evaluation for possible brain causes," he added.
Frontotemporal degeneration is a type of dementia that affects patients at a very early age. It is characterized by changes in personality, ability to concentrate, social skills, motivation and reasoning. Sometimes, this condition is mistaken for psychiatric disorders. Meanwhile, Alzheimer's disease is the most common type of dementia wherein patients affected with it manifests progressive loss of memory, disorientation, misinterpreting spatial relationships, difficulty in speaking and cognitive impairment. Primary Progressive Aphasia, on the other hand, is characterized by cognitive impairment and progressive loss of the language function.
