Sundowning (dementia) - Symptoms

Symptoms

Symptoms are not limited to but may include:

  • Increased general confusion as natural light begins to fade and increased shadows appear.
  • Agitation and mood swings. Patients may become fairly frustrated with their own confusion as well as aggravated by noise. Patients found yelling and becoming increasingly upset with their caregiver is not uncommon.
  • Mental and physical fatigue increase with the setting of the sun. This fatigue can play a role in the patient's irritability.
  • Tremors may increase and become uncontrollable.
  • A patient may experience an increase in their restlessness while trying to sleep. Restlessness can often lead to pacing and or wandering which can be potentially harmful for a patient in a confused state.

Read more about this topic:  Sundowning (dementia)

Famous quotes containing the word symptoms:

    A certain kind of rich man afflicted with the symptoms of moral dandyism sooner or later comes to the conclusion that it isn’t enough merely to make money. He feels obliged to hold views, to espouse causes and elect Presidents, to explain to a trembling world how and why the world went wrong. The spectacle is nearly always comic.
    Lewis H. Lapham (b. 1935)

    Not being a K.N. [Know-Nothing] I am left as a sort of waif on the political sea with symptoms of a mild sort towards Black Republicanism.
    Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1822–1893)

    There is one great fact, characteristic of this our nineteenth century, a fact which no party dares deny. On the one hand, there have started into life industrial and scientific forces which no epoch of former human history had ever suspected. On the other hand, there exist symptoms of decay, far surpassing the horrors recorded of the latter times of the Roman empire. In our days everything seems pregnant with its contrary.
    Karl Marx (1818–1883)