Tuesday, October 13, 2009

Depression vs apathy

Depression is a common psychiatric complication in parkinson's occcuring in about 40-50% of parkinson's patients. Depression is preceding motor symptoms of parkinson's.

Despite being very common in parkinson's, depression is often under-recognized and undertreated. Doctors, caregivers and parkinson's patients are usually more preoccupied with the movement disorder of parkinson's'

The symptoms of depression are:

1 Sadness 2.Guilt,3 irritability, 4.loss of interest 5.hopelessness and helplessness 6.insomina,excessive sleep and early morning awakeningsn 7. Ruminative thoughts(thinking over the same issue again and again) 8. difficulty concentrating 9. appetite change (increased or decreased) 10. weight change 11.emotional lability (unstable emotion) 12. Thoughts of death



Apathy is a lack of interest in things or activity, you don't want to do anything because you don't get any pleasure or stimulation from anything. People with apathy are disappointed by PD treatment. They refused to medication. They are not lazy or stubborn as what the caregivers and relatives said.

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