On the misalignment between research and clinical practice in psychology: An example from the Alzheimer’s and dementia field.

This article addresses this issue with a perspective on the Alzheimer’s and dementia field, and argues that research studies going forward must consider the presence of widespread psychiatric comorbidities in participants with, or at risk for, neurodegenerative disease. Chronic mental illness is a strong risk factor for dementia, but very little is known about how psychiatric and neurodegenerative diseases might interact, or how dementia presents in the context of a preexisting illness, because psychiatric conditions are systematic exclusion criteria from studies of dementia. Furthermore, the clinical features of dementia involve abnormalities in cognition (e.g., memory changes) and behaviour (e.g., disinhibition) that overlap substantially with those of certain mood disorders, psychotic disorders, and attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder. Thus, when individuals with psychiatric antecedents present with cognitive deficits in later life, determining whether the cause is neurodegenerative or not can be tricky. Misdiagnosis is frequent and costly, and has crucial implications for patient care and tracking estimates of disease incidence and prevalence. Specific areas for future research are proposed to extend our current body of dementia-related knowledge, which focuses on exceptions rather than the rule, to understudied, high-risk individuals. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved)
Source: Canadian Psychology - Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research