TY - JOUR PY - 2020// TI - Criminal behavior in the four years preceding diagnosis of neurocognitive disorder: a nationwide register study in Finland JO - American journal of geriatric psychiatry A1 - Talaslahti, Tiina A1 - Ginters, Milena A1 - Kautiainen, Hannu A1 - Vataja, Risto A1 - Elonheimo, Henrik A1 - Erkinjuntti, Timo A1 - Suvisaari, Jaana M. A1 - Lindberg, Nina A1 - Koponen, Hannu SP - ePub EP - ePub VL - ePub IS - ePub N2 - OBJECTIVE: To explore the criminality of patients with subsequent diagnosis of Alzheimer's disease (AD), frontotemporal dementia (FTD), or Lewy body dementias (LBD) in the four years preceding diagnosis. DESIGN: Nationwide register study. SETTING: Data on Finnish patients were collected from the discharge register and data on criminal offending from the police register. Research findings were compared with the same-aged general population. PARTICIPANTS: A total of 92,191 patients who had received a diagnosis of AD (N = 80,540), FTD (N = 1,060), and LBD (N = 10,591) between 1998 and 2015. MEASUREMENTS: Incidences and types of crimes, the standardized criminality ratio (number of actual crimes per number of expected crimes), and the numbers of observed cases and person-years at risk counted in five-year age groups and separately for both genders and yearly. RESULTS: At least one crime was committed by 1.6% of AD women and 12.8% of AD men, with corresponding figures of 5.3% and 23.5% in FTD, and 3.0% and 11.8% in LBD. The first crime was committed on average 2.7 (standard deviation 1.1) years before the diagnosis. The standardized criminality ratio was 1.85 (95% confidence interval [CI] 1.43-2.37) in FTD women and 1.75 (95% CI 1.54-1.98) in FTD men, and in AD 1.11 (95% CI 1.04-1.17) and 1.23 (95% CI 1.20-1.27), respectively. Traffic offences and crimes against property constituted 94% of all offences. CONCLUSION: Criminal acts may occur several years prior to the diagnosis of dementia. If novel criminality occurs later in life, it may be associated with neurocognitive disorder.

Language: en

LA - en SN - 1064-7481 UR - http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jagp.2020.11.011 ID - ref1 ER -