الفهرس 
Review of LiteratureOnly 14 pages are availabe for public view
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Abstract
The prevalence of cognitive impairment is increasing significantly worldwide among the elderly population which has a great social and economic burden. The economic burden of dementia is expected to reach more than $1 trillion as of the population ages.
Huge researches are being directed towards the identification of early symptoms of dementia and the implementation of various interventions.
SCD is the earliest warning sign of cognitive impairment and is defined as the self-reported feeling of being worse or more frequent confusion or memory impairment.
There is no standard formal approach to assess the prevalence of SCD up till now. And this explains the wide variation in the findings regarding SCD epidemiology including prevalence measurement.
Many tools have been implemented to identify elder individuals with SCD, that vary noticeably across studies and range from a direct single question about memory status or decline to in-depth questionnaires that target multiple cognitive domains
Several psychiatric conditions and subclinical psychiatric situations can influence cognition the most common of which are depression, anxiety, and sleep disorders.
A reciprocal relation is considered to be present between these variables and SCD. Various cross-sectional and longitudinal cohort studies have shown a high prevalence of anxiety, depression, and sleep disorders among the elderly complaining of SCD.
Research is now commencement to move away from a limited focus on the treatment of dementia to early detection of persons in the preclinical stage or SCD phase, the purpose of which is being to establish preventive interventions before significant clinical symptoms are manifested.
This thesis was conducted to assess the prevalence of anxiety and depression among elderly females complaining of SCD presenting to Ain Shams university hospitals outpatient clinics and the geriatrics memory clinic.
Our thesis showed that 31.2%, 54.6% of the studied sample (literate and illiterate respectively) reported SCD had MCI. The prevalence rate of anxiety among elderly females with SCD is 87.9% and 56.5% of them reported depressive symptoms of whom 44.9% are within the mild category. There are 91.6% of participants with SCD and MCI are complaining of sleeping problems with sleep quality index (8.4±1.9), those with SCD and normal cognition complaining of sleep problems are counting 76.8% of this group with sleep quality index of (7.5±2.2). So, further interventional studies are required to explore if correcting these risk factors will lead to a decrease in SCD prevalence and rate of conversion to MCI or dementia among older patients or not.
Recommendations
1- Attention must be paid from both physicians and relatives regarding SCD complaints of elderly aging 60 years old and above as it may reflect an objective decline in functional brain abilities or an expected future decline. In both cases early detection could delay the rate of conversion into MCI or dementia.
2- Screening of SCD should be done with other screening methods at primary health care centers. A valid, simple Arabic screening tool should be provided to primarily classify population into SCD and non SCD.
3- Detailed cognitive assessment should be done for the elderly complaining of SCD to differentiate people with subjective complaint from others with objective cognitive decline for proper management.
4- Psychological assessment for anxiety, depression, and sleep disorders should be done for the elderly presenting with SCD as control of these underlying conditions could reverse the subjective decline in cognitive abilities.