• Kazue Shigenobu, Nobutsugu Hirono, Kaoru Tabushi, and Manabu Ikeda.
• Department of Neuropsychiatry, Asakayama General Hospital, Sakai-ku, Sakai-city, Osaka 590-0018, Japen.
• Brain Nerve. 2008 Dec 1;60(12):1463-9.

ObjectiveNeuropsychiatric disturbances are common and burdensome symptoms of dementia. Assessment and measurement of neuropsychiatric disturbances are indispensable to the management of patients with dementia. Neuropsychiatric Inventory (NPI) is a comprehensive assessment tool that evaluates psychiatric symptoms in dementia. The Nursing Home Version (NPI-NH) of NPI was developed for use in extended care facilitate caring for residents with dementia. We translated the NPI-NH into Japanese and examined their validity and reliability.Subjects And MethodsThe subjects were 100 demented inpatients and the nurses in charge of them. The Mini-Mental State Examination (MMSE) was conducted with all patients and NPI-NH, Cohen-Mansfield Agitation Inventory (CMAI), Cornell Scale for Depression in Dementia (CSDD), and Behavior Pathology in Alzheimer's Disease (BEHAVE-AD) Rating Scale were conducted with the nurses. We examined validity of NPI-NH by comparing its score with the CMAI, CSDD, and BEHAVE-AD. In order to evaluate test-retest reliability, NPI-NH was re-adopted to 30 randomly selected nurses in charge inpatients by a different examiner 1 week later.ResultsThe frequency score, severity score and occupational disruptiveness score in each NPI-NH item were significantly correlated with the score of the correspondent item in BEHAVE-AD. The agitation score of NPI-NH was significantly correlated with CMAI and the depression score of NPI-NH was significantly correlated with CSDD. Test-retest reliability of the scores of NPI-NH was acceptably high.ConclusionThe Japanese version of NPI-NH demonstrated sufficient validity and reliability as well as the original version of them. It is a useful tool for evaluating psychiatric symptoms in demented inpatients.

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