There are both severe and mild symptoms that an individual has to display to be diagnosed with Neurocognitive Disorder due to Alzheimer’s disease. Cognitive decline is one of the most critical signs. Most of the time, the patient has impaired reasoning, experiences forgetfulness, distractibility, anhedonia and lack of insight. A person can also experience negative emotions, depression and anxiety ( Kota et al., 2015) .They could also be highly distracted and have difficulties sleeping. In severe cases, one could experience the psychomotor slowing, inability to pursue self-care, confusion and in some cases, unusual beliefs. A diagnosis would take both a genetic and neuropsychological test. Moreover, there is a recent blood test that recognizes possible Neurocognitive Disorder that could affect an individual in 3 years. Most importantly, a simple peanut butter test is a non-invasive test that tests the interference of the first cranial nerve, which is often the first to be affected cognitively when one suffers from Alzheimer’s.
There are no known effective psychotherapeutic approaches that can help alleviate the symptoms related to Neurocognitive Disorder due to Alzheimer’s disease. Cognitive therapy, for example, has not been effective in reducing the progression of the disease. There are, however, psychopharmacologic treatments that have been proven effective in reducing the rate of progression of the disease. The medicines used include cholinesterase inhibitors donepezil, galantamine and rivastigmine (Stahl, 2020). Cholinesterase inhibitors help in slowing aspects of behavior and cognitive changes.
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Furthermore, these interventions improve the patient’s functionality. The above outweigh the risks of the medications, for example, increased impairment. This is because basic functions and behavior modification are a few of the elements that deteriorate the health of patients with the disease. For the elderly with Dementia, it is not recommended that Nuplazid and other antipsychotic medication are used (U.S. Food and Drug Administration. (n. d.). Often, they increase the risk of mortality; hence, the risks of using this therapy outweigh the advantages.
References
Kota, L. N., Bharath, S., Purushottam, M., Moily, N. S., Sivakumar, P. T., Varghese, M., ... & Jain, S. (2015). Reduced telomere length in neurodegenerative disorders may suggest shared biology. The Journal of neuropsychiatry and clinical neurosciences , 27 (2), e92-e96.
Stahl, S. M. (2017). Prescriber's guide: Stahl's essential psychopharmacology . Cambridge University Press.
U.S. Food and Drug Administration. (n. d.). Highlights of prescribing information: Nuplazid. Retrieved from https://www.accessdata.fda.gov/drugsatfda_docs/label/2016/207318lbl.pdf
