Abstract
The current study developed prognostic tools to identify dementia caregivers at-risk for clinically relevant burden or depressive symptoms following nursing home admission (NHA) of their family members. A retrospective, longitudinal design was used that included 1,610 dementia caregivers who provided data prior to and up to 6 months following nursing home admission. Response operant characteristic (ROC) curves were constructed to test and validate two prognostic tools: the NHA-Burden and NHA-Depression tools. An ROC curve yielded a sensitivity of 77% and a specificity of 62.5% at a cutoff score of 5.41 for the NHA-Burden Prognostic tool. A second ROC curve indicated a sensitivity of 75.4% and a specificity of 62.5% at a cutoff score of 7.45 for the NHA-Depression tool. Clinicians may wish to utilize cutpoints on the NHA-Burden and NHA-Depression tools to ensure that more persons who are at-risk for clinically significant burden or depression during NHA are identified.
| Original language | English (US) |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 624-646 |
| Number of pages | 23 |
| Journal | Journal of Applied Gerontology |
| Volume | 33 |
| Issue number | 5 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - Aug 2014 |
Bibliographical note
Funding Information:This research was supported by grant R21 AG025625 from the National Institute on Aging/National Institutes of Health.
Keywords
- Alzheimer's disease
- caregiving
- dementia
- nursing homes
- stress