Interactions entre le sujet âgé Alzheimer et son environnement

According to the literature, behavioural disorders in the elderly subject with dementia, e.g. agitation, aggressiveness, are the consequence of the deterioration of cognitive function. While this dimension is important, it underestimates the influence of the environment in the triggering of such behavior. In our opinion, some of the disruptive behavior of the patient, a mentally perturbed person, is produced in reply to a certain context. In this sense, such behaviour has communicative value, i.e. the actions of the demented elderly in response to the environment are the manifestations of personal will. The purpose of this study conducted with 20 institutionalized persons with Alzheimer's dementia was to identify situations where such persons react to the environment. The use of a standard observation chart enabled the identification of reactive behaviour in several situations of daily life. After presenting all illustrative observations, we examine individual cases to emphasize the importance of interindividual variability, expressed by very different patterns of behavior in the same context of mental deficiency.