New criteria for Parkinson's disease-associated psychosis (PDAP) were recently proposed by a NINDS-NIMH working group. We assessed 116 consecutive unselected outpatients with PD for the existence of psychotic symptoms during the previous month, using a structured questionnaire covering the whole spectrum of PDAP symptoms. Hallucinations occurred in 42% of the patients (visual: 16%; nonvisual: 35%), delusions in 4%, and minor symptoms in 45% (sense of presence, visual illusions, or passage hallucinations). The prevalence of PDAP was 43% when the usual definition was used (hallucinations and/or delusions) and 60% when the NINDS-NIHM criteria were used. Correlations between PDAP and patient characteristics varied with the definition of PDAP. These findings suggest that the epidemiology of PDAP should be re-evaluated with the new criteria. Minor symptoms and nonvisual hallucinations are an important part of the PDAP spectrum, which has commonly been restricted to visual hallucinations and delusions.
2010 Movement Disorder Society