Spontaneity in dementia: an analysis of 696 institutionalized elderly patients.

Activities of daily living (ADL), mental function, spontaneity, emotion and problematic behaviors were compared in elderly patients with hip fracture, hemiplegia, hemiparesis, senile dementia of Alzheimer type and multi-infarct dementia. Osteoarthropathy patients with normal intelligence served as a control group. ADL was most strongly affected by spontaneity, then, by intelligence. The contributions of emotion and problematic behaviors were not very marked.