ASSESSMENT OF MOOD STATES IN PSYCHIATRICALLY DISTURBED PATIENTS WITH DEMENTIA

Labile affect is a common characteristic of elderly psychiatry patient s, especially among patients in the early stages of primary progressiv e dementia. The authors sought to develop a method of assessing the fu ll range of positive and negative moods in psychiatric patients with e arly dementia and healthy elderly subjects. They modified the Derogati s Affects Balance Scale (DABS) to ease its administration in cognitive ly compromised patients and presented it to 51 geropsychiatry inpatien ts with dementia of either Alzheimer's or vascular etiology. The modif ied DABS was found to discriminate depressed and nondepressed dementia patients and have acceptable test-retest reliability coefficients, de spite extensive variation in scores. Analyses of construct and criteri on-related validity were also consistent with previous DABS normative studies.