Am J Psychiatry 1990; 147:1049-1051
Copyright © 1990 by American Psychiatric Association
Psychiatric symptoms and nursing home placement of patients with Alzheimer's disease
C Steele, B Rovner, GA Chase and M Folstein
Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, Baltimore, Md.
Two hundred ten community-dwelling patients with Alzheimer's disease were
examined prospectively by psychiatrists as part of a longitudinal study.
Twenty-five of these patients who were institutionalized during the next 3
years were then matched to 25 patients who were not institutionalized, and
the groups were compared. The patients who had been institutionalized had
higher scores on standardized psychiatric rating scales but not on formal
neuropsychological tests of cognition. These results suggest that
potentially treatable (noncognitive) behavioral and psychiatric symptoms
are risk factors for institutionalization, and that treating these symptoms
might delay or prevent institutionalization of some patients.
