The behavioral pathology in Alzheimer's disease scale (BEHAVE-AD): factor structure among community-dwelling Alzheimer's disease patients
✍ Scribed by Dylan G. Harwood; Raymond L. Ownby; Warren W. Barker; Ranjan Duara
- Publisher
- John Wiley and Sons
- Year
- 1998
- Tongue
- English
- Weight
- 126 KB
- Volume
- 13
- Category
- Article
- ISSN
- 0885-6230
No coin nor oath required. For personal study only.
✦ Synopsis
Objective:
The aims of this study were to (a) determine the factor structure of the behavioral pathology in alzheimer's disease scale (behave-ad), and (b) examine the associations of the observed factors to the level of cognitive impairment.
Design:
Cross-sectional study of geriatric patients evaluated at an outpatient memory disorders clinic.
Sample:
One hundred and fifty-one consecutive patients diagnosed with alzheimer's disease (ad) according to nincds-adrda diagnostic criteria.
Results:
Principal factors analysis with varimax rotation resulted in a five-factor solution that accounted for 40.0% of the common variance. the factors included agitation/anxiety (agitation, anxiety of upcoming events; other anxiety), psychosis (delusions of theft, suspiciousness/paranoia; visual hallucinations), aggression (verbal aggressiveness; physical threats/violence; fear of being left alone; other delusions), depression (tearfulness; depressed mood) and activity disturbance (wandering; delusion one's house is not one's home). several factors were associated with level of cognitive impairment as assessed by the mini-mental state examination (mmse).
Conclusion:
The results of this study suggest that the behave-ad measures a wide range of behavioral pathology that can be empirically represented by five independent symptom clusters among outpatient ad patients.