Wandering and twilight in a female psychogeriatric population

Abstract

With the move towards community care, the problem of wandering behaviour in psychogeriatric patients may pose a barrier to their placement in residential homes. The prevailing wisdom that this behaviour increased around twilight was looked at by Evans (1983) whose study showed increased restlessness in the late afternoon in a nursing home population. Cohen-Mansfield et al (1989), however, did not find any clear pattern of behaviour related to sundown. This study examines only wandering behaviour and controls for seasonal change in twilight times.