Alzheimer's and Eating Disorders in Older Adults
This paper presents a literature review of two significant mental health disorders affecting the elderly population: Alzheimer's-type dementia and eating disorders. Drawing on the DSM-IV-TR classification framework, the paper examines the cognitive impairments associated with Alzheimer's disease — including memory loss, language deficits, and behavioral symptoms — alongside current diagnostic tools and treatment options. It also explores the underexamined prevalence of eating disorders such as anorexia nervosa and bulimia nervosa among older adults, analyzing how physical, psychological, and social factors contribute to disordered eating in later life. The paper concludes that dementia and eating disorders in the elderly may be self-perpetuating, and that overlapping symptoms with depression make accurate diagnosis especially challenging.
- Introduction: Overview of elderly mental disorders and research scope
- Alzheimer's-Type Dementia: Overview and Cognitive Impairment: Causes, stages, and cognitive effects of Alzheimer's
- Assessment and Management of Alzheimer's Disease: Diagnostic tools, biomarkers, and treatment options
- Eating Disorders in the Elderly: Prevalence and risk factors of late-life eating disorders
- Body Image, Etiology, and Clinical Features of Late-Life Eating Disorders: Body image, multifactorial causes, and clinical presentations
- Discussion and Conclusion: Self-perpetuating link between dementia and disordered eating
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What makes this paper effective
- The paper synthesizes a wide range of peer-reviewed studies to build a coherent picture of two distinct but interrelated disorders in older adults, showing how they can reinforce each other.
- It highlights an underexplored research gap — eating disorders in the elderly — and uses the existing literature on younger populations to draw meaningful comparisons with older adult presentations.
- The discussion section draws together threads from both halves of the paper to reach an original integrative conclusion about the self-perpetuating relationship between dementia and eating disorders.
Key academic technique demonstrated
The paper demonstrates effective use of a comparative literature review structure, placing studies in dialogue with one another rather than simply summarizing them in isolation. For example, findings from Fairfield and Mammarella (2009) on source-monitoring deficits are linked to Carreiras et al. (2008) on syllabic processing, reinforcing a cumulative argument about cognitive decline in Alzheimer's patients.
Structure breakdown
The paper opens with a broad introduction to mental disorders in the elderly and the DSM-IV-TR framework, then divides into two main literature review sections — one on Alzheimer's disease and one on eating disorders. Each section moves from prevalence and symptoms through diagnosis to management. The final discussion synthesizes both sections, identifying shared symptoms, diagnostic challenges, and the self-perpetuating cycle between dementia and disordered eating.
Introduction
In considering the general health of the population, a larger elderly population does not necessarily mean that most older adults live with or suffer from severe disabilities. Age-related disorders occur at different points in different people's lives. People are living longer and healthier, with the elderly population achieving this in the higher age range of a 5–10 year population cohort. However, there are key exceptions regarding disorders and mental health conditions in the older population, illustrated by conditions such as dementia, Alzheimer's disease, and the wider spectrum of related disorders. Understanding mental disorders in older people is currently an important area of inquiry. This paper presents a thorough review of literature to examine two disorders affecting the elderly population.
The focus is on understanding Delirium, Dementia, Amnestic and Other Cognitive Disorders, and eating disorders — categories from the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-IV-TR) — as they present in older people. Cognition encompasses orientation, language, judgment, memory, performance of actions, problem-solving, and the conduct of interpersonal relationships (Benjamin & Virginia, 2008). Cognitive disorders are those that disrupt one or more of these aspects and are often complicated by behavioral symptoms. Delirium, Dementia, and Amnestic Disorders are characterized by complex interfaces among psychiatry, medicine, and neurology.
According to the DSM-IV-TR, these three groups — dementia, delirium, and amnestic disorders — share a common core symptom: impairment of cognition. Delirium is short-term confusion indicated by changes in cognition, caused by general medical conditions such as infection, multiple causes such as kidney failure and head trauma, substance-induced states, or unspecified causes (Benjamin & Virginia, 2008). Dementia is indicated by severe impairment in judgment, memory, cognition, and orientation. There are six categories of dementia, including Alzheimer's-type dementia — which occurs mainly in persons over 65 years and is indicated by delusions, disorientation, and depression — as well as vascular dementia caused by thrombosis or hemorrhage, dementia due to medical conditions such as head trauma or Pick's disease, substance-induced dementia, dementia of multiple etiologies, and dementia not otherwise specified (Benjamin & Virginia, 2008). Amnestic disorder is indicated by forgetfulness and memory impairment, caused by a medical condition such as hypoxia or by medication or toxin exposure. Of particular interest is the presentation of Alzheimer's-type dementia in the elderly, since dementia shares symptoms with other DSM-IV-TR disorders — including impaired judgment, memory, cognition, and speech orientation.
While many studies investigate cognitive disorders in elderly populations, few investigate the trend of eating disorders in this group, as eating disorders have historically been considered conditions of adolescents and middle-aged people. Eating disorders are examined here because they are on the rise among the elderly population (Business Wire, 2013). Eating disorders are indicated by two primary conditions — Bulimia Nervosa and Anorexia Nervosa — both characterized by a preoccupation with body image. The literature indicates that eating disorders in the elderly present with symptoms similar to those seen in younger sufferers, with a comparably strong emphasis on body image. This paper investigates eating disorders as a mental health issue affecting the elderly through factors such as difficulty eating, dementia or forgetting to eat, cancer or illness-related inability to cook and shop, poverty, elder abuse, and isolation.
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