Overview

• Published in BMJ Mental Health, the analysis examined records for 3,688 patients aged 45 and older treated at a Paris psychiatry department between August 2009 and October 2023.
• Dementia odds increased with psychiatric multimorbidity, rising from about twice as high with one disorder to 11 times as high with four or more.
• Compared with patients with one disorder, those with two had roughly double the odds of dementia, those with three had more than quadruple the odds, and those with four or more had 11-fold odds.
• Concurrent mood and anxiety disorders were linked to up to a 90% higher likelihood of dementia diagnosis.
• The average interval from first psychiatric diagnosis to dementia was 18 months (range seven months to 13 years), and the authors reported no similar association with renal failure while noting single-center, observational limits.