The potential of actigraphy to assess agitation in dementia

It is now well understood that much of the public health burden of dementia is due to neuropsychiatric symptoms, including agitation, apathy, and circadian rhythm disturbances. Improving interventions for these targets are crucial to decreasing patient and caregiver distress. There have been recent successes in repurposing existing medications for these targets including agitation, for example citalopram 1. But treatment development requires reliable measures and to date most agitation measures are largely subjective, consisting of informant reports with anchored ordinal scales.
Source: The American Journal of Geriatric Psychiatry - Category: Geriatrics Authors: Tags: Invited Perspective Source Type: research