New study says that first-time criminal behavior by elderly may be early sign of dementia

January 9, 2015

Criminal behavior in older adults, including theft, traffic violations, sexual advances, trespassing, and public urination, may be a sign of dementia, researchers say. There is a subgroup of people, especially older adults who are first-time offenders, who may have a degenerative brain disease underlying their criminal behavior, said Dr. Georges Naasan of the Memory and Aging Center and Department of Neurology at the University of California, San Francisco. He and his coauthors reviewed the medical records of 2,397 patients diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease or other types of dementia between 1999 and 2012. They scanned patient notes for entries about criminal behavior using keywords like ‘arrest,’ ‘DUI,’ ‘shoplift’ and ‘violence’ and uncovered 204 patients, or 8.5 percent, who qualified. Their behaviors were more often an early sign of frontotemporal dementia (bvFTD) or primary progressive aphasia (PPA), a type of language-deteriorating dementia, than of Alzheimer’s disease.