Awareness of Mild Cognitive Impairment and Mild Alzheimer’s Disease Dementia Diagnoses Associated With Lower Self-Ratings of Quality of Life in Older Adults

ABSTRACTBackground: Caregivers of individuals with dementia are biased in their rating of mental health measures of the care receiver. This study examines caregiver burden and depression as predictors of this bias for mild cognitive impairment and mild Alzheimer's disease in different domains.Methods: The sample consisted of 202 persons: 60 with mild cognitive impairment, 41 with mild Alzheimer's disease, and 101 caregivers. Discrepancy scores were calculated by subtracting the mean caregiver score from the respective mean patient score on the following assessment instruments: the Geriatric Depression Scale, Apathy Evaluation Scale, Bayer-Activities of Daily Living Scale, and Quality of Life-AD scale. Caregiver burden and depression were assessed by the Zarit Burden Interview and the Center for Epidemiologic Studies Depression Scale.Results: Intraclass correlation coefficients were low for apathy (0.38), daily functioning (0.38), and quality of life (0.30) and moderate for depression (0.49). These domains showed negative rating discrepancies, which indicates caregiver rating bias for all four domains. Regression analyses revealed that caregiver burden significantly contributed to explaining these discrepancies in the domains apathy, daily functioning, and quality of life.Conclusion: Caregiver rating bias can be attributed to caregiver burden. When caregiver burden is present, data based on caregiver ratings should therefore be interpreted with caution.

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P3-426: Quality of life in mild cognitive impairment that does not progress to Alzheimer disease: Longitudinal analyses of the investigation to delay the diagnosis of Alzheimer's disease with Exelon (InDDex) study

Alzheimer s & Dementia ◽

10.1016/j.jalz.2008.05.1997 ◽

2008 ◽

Vol 4 ◽

pp. T646-T647

Author(s):

Claudia Jacova ◽

Nagaendran Kandiah ◽

Michael Schulzer ◽

Howard Feldman

Keyword(s):

Quality Of Life ◽

Alzheimer’S Disease ◽

Alzheimer's Disease ◽

Cognitive Impairment ◽

Mild Cognitive Impairment ◽

Alzheimer Disease ◽

Longitudinal Analyses

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Self-Rated Quality of Life in Mild Cognitive Impairment and Alzheimer’s Disease

GeroPsych ◽

10.1024/1662-9647/a000029 ◽

2011 ◽

Vol 24 (1) ◽

pp. 45-51 ◽

Cited By ~ 5

Author(s):

M. Berwig ◽

H. Leicht ◽

K. Hartwig ◽

H. J. Gertz

Keyword(s):

Quality Of Life ◽

Alzheimer’S Disease ◽

Alzheimer's Disease ◽

Cognitive Impairment ◽

Mild Cognitive Impairment ◽

Mood State ◽

Self Assessment ◽

Current Mood ◽

Degree Of Association

Background: Cognitively impaired or demented patients may have difficulty performing the complex and multidimensional appraisal required by self-ratings (SR) of quality of life (QoL). Even healthy subjects often refer to their current mood state for QoL self-assessment. Therefore, it is hypothesized that patients rely on current mood state as a reference point for QoL SR, and that the degree of reliance increases with the level of cognitive impairment. Methods: Two consecutive samples of 14 patients with mild cognitive impairment (MCI) and 16 patients with Alzheimer’s disease (AD) were examined using the self-rated Dementia-Quality of Life (DEMQoL), a multidimensional mood state questionnaire (MDBF-A, Mehrdimensionaler Befindlichkeitsfragebogen), and the Mini-Mental State Examination (MMSE; MCI: mean = 25.1, SD = 2.1; AD: mean = 20.3, SD = 2.7). Results: As expected, correlations between current mood state and QoL SR (DEMQoL) were highly significant in AD patients but not in MCI patients. The degree of association for all significant correlations was also significantly higher in AD than in MCI patients. Conclusions: The results indicate that SR of QoL are more affectively distorted in AD than MCI. Mood state questionnaires may be an alternative to QoL questionnaires for AD patients, in particular if mood state ratings can be averaged across several points of assessment thus enhancing their validity.

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The Effectiveness of Item-Specific Encoding and Conservative Responding to Reduce False Memories in Patients with Mild Cognitive Impairment and Mild Alzheimer’s Disease Dementia

Journal of the International Neuropsychological Society ◽

10.1017/s1355617720000715 ◽

2020 ◽

pp. 1-12

Author(s):

Christopher Malone ◽

Katherine W. Turk ◽

Rocco Palumbo ◽

Andrew E. Budson

Keyword(s):

Alzheimer’S Disease ◽

Older Adults ◽

Alzheimer's Disease ◽

Cognitive Impairment ◽

Mild Cognitive Impairment ◽

False Memories ◽

Memory Errors ◽

Neuropsychological Measures ◽

Healthy Older Adults ◽

Alzheimer’S Disease Dementia

Abstract Objective: Patients with mild Alzheimer’s disease dementia are more susceptible to false memories than healthy older adults. Evidence that these patients can use cognitive strategies to reduce false memory is inconsistent. Method: In the present study, we examined the effectiveness of conservative responding and item-specific deep encoding strategies, alone and in combination, to reduce false memory in a categorized word list paradigm among participants with mild Alzheimer’s disease dementia (AD), amnestic single-domain mild cognitive impairment (MCI), and healthy age-matched older controls (OCs). A battery of clinical neuropsychological measures was also administered. Results: Although use of conservative responding alone tended to reduce performance in the MCI and OC groups, both deep encoding alone and deep encoding combined with conservative strategies led to improved discrimination for both gist memory and item-specific recollection for these two groups. In the AD group, only gist memory benefited from the use of strategies, boosted equally by deep encoding alone and deep encoding combined with conservative strategies; item-specific recollection was not improved. No correlation between the use of these strategies and performance on neuropsychological measures was found. Conclusions: These results suggest that further evaluation of these strategies is warranted as they have the potential to reduce related and unrelated memory errors and increase both gist memory and item-specific recollection in healthy older adults and individuals with amnestic MCI. Patients with AD were less able to benefit from such strategies, yet were still able to use them to reduce unrelated memory errors and increase gist memory.

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