Suicidal tendencies in dementia

Although dementia is primarily associated with cognitive and functional decline, clinical practice is increasingly showing an increased risk of suicidal thoughts, suicide attempts and suicide death rates. Differences in the distribution of behavioral and psychological symptoms across dementia subtypes suggest that suicide risk is not uniform. The recent systematic review and meta-analysis by Nuzum et al [1] is used as an example to examine how Alzheimer’s dementia, vascular dementia, frontotemporal dementia, Lewy body dementia and mixed forms differ in the occurrence of suicidality and what consequences this has for diagnosis, prevention and treatment.