DefinedHealth

Ginger S. Johnson, PhD

Psychiatric and behavioral disorders are common co-morbidities of neurological disease:

• More than 50% of Alzheimer’s disease (AD) patients exhibit symptoms of apathy, agitation, depression, anxiety andaggression. A smaller, but not unimportant percentage of AD patients experience delusions, hallucinations andpsychoses.

• Parkinson’s disease patients commonly present with depression, hallucination, delusions and anxiety.

• An estimated 50% of multiple sclerosis patients suffer from co-morbid depression.

• Cognitive impairment is commonly associated with epilepsy, and patients who have suffered a stroke or traumatic braininjury are often depressed.

Neurological diseases are associated with damage, progressive degeneration and eventual death of specific neuronal cellpopulations, thus psychiatric illness in these patients groups may be neurobiologically distinct. Available medications do notadequately address the needs of these patients, while many would argue that these psychiatric and behavioral issues may infact have a greater impact on quality of life than the symptoms of the underlying neurological pathology.In distinct contrast to the oncology field, where co-morbidities such as pain, emesis and cachexia, for example, have beentransformed into a therapeutic category known as supportive oncology, the industry has left supportive care/quality of lifeopportunities in neurology virtually unexplored. Join us as we discuss this untapped potential opportunity, intriguingly positioned at the crossroads of neurology and psychiatry.