Do medical treatments increase the risk of substance abuse in older people with dementia

Abstract

The current study aims to determine the association between medical treatments and the risk of substance abuse in the elderly with dementia. The research was conducted on Malaysian elderly who were demented and non-institutionalized. The study was a national cross sectional survey that included 1210 non-institutionalized Malaysian elderly with dementia. The Multiple Logistic Regression Model was applied to predict the risk of substance abuse in respondents. The prevalence of substance abuse was approximately 57.9% among subjects. Furthermore, medical treatment (OR = 1.88, 95% CI: 1.37–2.59), ethnic non-Malay (OR = 1.44, 95% CI: 1.12–1.84) and male sex (OR = 4.64; 95% CI: 3.42–6.29) significantly increased substance abuse after adjusting for socio-demographic factors. The results showed that age, marital status and educational level did not predict significantly the risk of substance abuse in samples (p > 0.05). It was concluded that male sex, medical treatment and ethnic non-Malay can increase the risk of substance abuse in the older people with dementia.

• Dementia
• medical treatment
• substance abuse

Acknowledgments

The authors gratefully acknowledge the co-operation of all volunteers who participated in this study. In addition, the authors also thank all staff in their efforts on data collection.

Declaration of interest

The authors report no conflicts of interest. The authors wish to acknowledge the financial support from the Ministry of Health for this study.