Clinical and psychosocial variables associated with different types of behaviour problem in new nursing home admissions

✍ Scribed by Dr. Richard K. Morriss; Barry W. Rovner; Pearl S. German

• Publisher: John Wiley and Sons
• Year: 1995
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 775 KB
• Volume: 10
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0885-6230
• DOI: 10.1002/gps.930100704

✦ Synopsis

The behaviour problems of 451 subjects at 2 weeks after admission to eight nursing homes were recorded on the Psychogeriatric Dependency Rating Scale. Factor analysis extracted four types of behaviour problem: antisocial behaviour, motor activity, communication problems and demands. Associations between the four types of behaviour problems and demographic, psychiatric, psychosocial and physical variables were examined. Multiple linear regression revealed that the four behaviour problem factors were associated with different clinical variables and possibly different aetiologies. However, only 20% or less of the variance in behaviour problems could be explained by variables examined in the study.

KEY WORDS-behaviour problems; nursing homes; psychosocial factors; clinical features Do different behaviour problems in nursing home residents have different aetiologies and require different treatment approaches? Previous studies have started to examine the aetiology of specific behaviour problems in the nursing home, for example agitation (eg Cohen-Mansfield et al., 1992), wandering (Martino-Saltzman et al., 1991) and noisemaking (Cariaga et al., 1991). In general, these studies have examined specific behaviour problems in isolation from the rest of the subject's behaviour. As a result, it is not clear how the aetiology of the studied behaviour problem differs from the aetiology of other behaviour problems in the same sample. Furthermore, previous studies have examined subjects who have been resident in the nursing home for varying amounts of time. The behaviour of residents changes over time as subjects adapt to the new nursing home environment (Nirenberg,