Two commonly confused words are Delirium and Dementia. Are they the same? No, but a delirium can be superimposed on dementia. Both these diseases are quite common these days and they do have an impact on various mental aspects.  Those can affect one’s mood, behavior, sleep, memory, perceptions, thought process, etc…

Before getting in to the details of the diseases regarding what causes Delirium and Dementia, it would be appropriate to tell what these are.

Delirium and Dementia

Delirium is often described as a temporary confusional state. Dementia is found to affect more than one third of people who are above 80 years of age and it’s characterized by benign forgetfulness.

Delirium patients get delusions quite common, were as in Dementia patient may have delusions.

Delirium patient may not be depressed all the time as in case of a dementia patient. Delirium patients are often reported to have fluctuating mood. At times they would be irritable, sometimes depressed, fearful and even normal.

Delirium, the disease usually does have an acute onset and dementia does have an insidious onset.

Orientation of a Dementia patient would be normal till he proceed to later stages of his disease. The orientation of a Delirium patient would be highly disoriented.

It’s often seen that dementia manifests in a person in a slow steady manner were as delirium’s course of disease is fluctuating with lucid intervals and has often reported to get worsen at night.

It’s an interesting fact that dementia patient’s level of consciousness and attention would be usually normal till the later stage of disease. But for a Delirium patient, his level of consciousness would be disturbed. The Delirium patient would be finding difficulty to focus. He may fail to sustain and or shift attention.

For a Delirium patient his thought process must be incoherent while for a Dementia patient would be impoverished.

The speech of a Delirium patient would be slow or rapid. Most of the time, he hesitates to speak. Dementia patients suffer from aphasia, difficulty in finding words.

The duration of these diseases has found to vary. Delirium stays for hours to weeks and Dementia stays for months… Sometimes it stays for years.

A Delirium patient sleep would be disrupted were as Dementia patient might get highly fragmented sleep.

Recent and immediate memory impaired in case of a Delirium patient. For a Dementia patient, his recent memory and new learning would be impaired.

A Delirium patient exhibits conditions called hyper vigilance or agitation characterized by highly excited state. The same person may hibernate in his activities. He can be dead slow. Dementia patients can be slow or normal, but at times their activities are inappropriate.

Delirium patient’s judgments are often impaired and Dementia patients could be highly impaired over the course of disease.

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