[Management of behavioral disorders in patients with dementia. Significance, diagnosis, non-medicamentous and medicamentous therapy].

: In the clinical course of dementia delusion, hyperactivity, depression, anxiety and aggression are very frequent behavioural disturbances. Caregivers are weighted down more by those disturbances than by the cognitive deficits of the patients. The hazy term of "agitation" may be seized diagnostically, differentiated by scales recording behaviour disturbances, as brain-organic causes of the agitation must be distinguished from both, reactive troubles and dementia specific disturbances. Regular medical assessment of the behavioural disturbances of demented patients is a starting point for rational environmental and medicinal interventions. The best prevention of disturbed behaviour is adequate treatment by not asking too much of the demented patients and an appropriate living ambience. Moreover there are newly developed atypical neuroleptics and the latest generation of antidepressants at disposal. A survey of the most prescribed drugs for the treatment of different symptoms is being explained.