International journal of geriatric psychiatry
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Int J Geriatr Psychiatry · Jun 1998
Depressive symptoms of Alzheimer caregivers are mainly due to personal rather than patient factors.
To investigate the predictors of caregiver's depressive symptoms in a sample of community-dwelling Alzheimer's patients. ⋯ Factors related to the caregiver--relationship, health and competence--rather than to the patient constitute the main risk factors for caregiver's depressive symptomatology.
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Delirium is a common mental disorder in the elderly with old age being a major risk factor for delirium. Another major risk factor is dementia. The aim of the present study was to identify differences in occurrence of episodes of delirium between the most common dementia diagnoses and the possible importance of age, gender, severity and duration of dementia for the development of delirium. ⋯ The differences in occurrence of delirium between the diagnostic groups in this sample could not be explained by differences in age. It seems that delirium is more common in brain disorders such as LAD and VAD in which the damage to the brain is more widespread. In the two brain disorders that are predominantly cortical, EAD and FTD, the occurrence of delirium was comparatively low.
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Int J Geriatr Psychiatry · Oct 1997
Cognitive impairment and social distress as different pathways to depression in the elderly: a cross-sectional study.
This study investigates the recent suggestion that some putative aetiological factors for depression, such as cerebral deterioration and social distress, may act differentially in the aetiology of depression in old age. ⋯ The results of this theory-driven analysis lend some support to the notion of at least two differential pathways to depression in the elderly, one via social distress factors and another mediated by cerebral deterioration clinically expressed as cognitive impairment.
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Int J Geriatr Psychiatry · Oct 1997
The Caregiver Activity Survey (CAS): development and validation of a new measure for caregivers of persons with Alzheimer's disease.
Most instruments that measure the impairments associated with Alzheimer's disease assess symptom severity. Little attention has been paid to the illness's impact on the time formal and informal caregivers spend caring for Alzheimer's individuals. A tool that measures the time spent caregiving would help to determine the economic impact of the illness. The Caregiver Activity Survey (CAS) was developed to measure the time caregivers spend aiding Alzheimer's patients with their day-to-day activities. ⋯ The CAS provides a new tool that measures time spent caring for Alzheimer's individuals. The instrument may be used to augment existing clinical assessments that measure the efficacy of potentially therapeutic agents for persons with Alzheimer's disease.
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Int J Geriatr Psychiatry · Sep 1997
Evaluating the caregiver's intervention in the elder's task performance: capacity versus actual behavior.
As an elder's functional impairment increases, so in general does the tendency for the caregiver to intervene in the elder's daily activities and initiatives. To a certain extent, such intervention is necessary to compensate for the elder's loss of independent ability, and without such intervention, adverse outcomes for the elder are a possibility. The need for some intervention is usually clear-cut for advanced dementia, given its associated severe disability and handicap, but less clear in elders who are just beginning to show signs of cognitive decline. ⋯ A sample of 51 cognitively impaired elders and 74 cognitively normal elders was used to look at the relationship between predicted capacity and actual self-administration of medication, stratifying by level of cognitive status. The highly significant concordance between the MMT score and caregivers' report of medication administration supports the expectation that capacity is influenced by cognitive status. In those discordant cases, further information is needed to interpret help in medication administration as excessive or insufficient intervention.