When is mental health assessment recommended for dementia?

An assessment considers memory and thinking changes alongside depression, anxiety, hallucinations, agitation, apathy, sleep, pain, medicines, infection, and changes in the home environment. A person with dementia may communicate distress through behaviour rather than words. Information from a family member or caregiver can help describe changes, triggers, and what calms the person.

Contact the person’s general practitioner, memory service, psychologist, psychiatrist, or dementia team. Record new symptoms, when they started, medicine changes, missed meals, falls, sleep changes, and possible sources of pain. Keep communication calm, use familiar routines, and bring the person’s current medicine list to the appointment.

Seek urgent care for sudden confusion, a rapid change in behaviour, new weakness, fever, a fall with injury, severe drowsiness, or inability to eat or drink. Emergency support is needed if the person may harm themselves or someone else, is missing and at risk, or cannot be kept safe at home.

Ask whether the change could have a physical cause, which symptoms need specialist review, how medicines may contribute, and what caregiver support or safety plan should be put in place.