THE STRUCTURE OF WANDERING IN DEMENTIA

'Wandering' is one of the most troublesome of behavioural problems in dementia. The term 'wandering' covers many different types of behaviou r. We examined the hypothesis that the different types of wandering be haviour seen in dementia form a scale using data collected on 83 elder ly subjects suffering from either Alzheimer's disease or multiinfarct dementia. We reject the scaling hypothesis. Our data suggest that ther e are three main categories of wandering behaviour, and that one of th ese categories is usefully divided into four subcategories.