ABSTRACT
Wandering is often one of the first symptoms that gets an individual living in the community into trouble, or puts him or her in danger. Wandering is a single-minded determination to walk that is unresponsive to persuasion. The behavioural definition distinguishes between wandering with risk and wandering as nuisance, as well as interpreting walking as wandering if the behaviour is to excess, even though there is no risk or disturbance to others. Separation anxiety motivates those with dementia to cling to this other person, or if the person with dementia is removed to another setting in order to give their family respite from the suffocating pressure of being trailed, they will attempt to leave so they may seek the whereabouts of those significant others. A person with dementia may become confused in an attempt to find somebody who or something that is unobtainable because it resides in their past.
