Spontaneity in Dementia: An Analysis of 696 Institutionalized Elderly Patients

Activities of daily living (ADL), mental function, spontaneity, emotion and problematic behaviors were compared in elderly patients with hip fracture, hemiplegia, hemiparesis, senile demen-tia of Alzheimer type and multi-infarct dementia. Osteoarthropathy patients with normal intelligence served as a control group. ADL was most strongly affected by spontaneity, then, by intelligence. The contributions of emotion and problematic behaviors were not very marked.