ALBANY, N.Y. (AP) — New York police are changing the way they report cases when a mentally impaired adult is declared missing.

Police already maintain a statewide database for missing children, but reports of missing adults with mental impairments are treated differently and are often not reported to the database. That can become a problem when an adult with a condition such as Alzheimer’s disease disappears from one community and turns up, dead or alive, in another.