Journal of the American Geriatrics Society
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To review published reports of interventions for caregivers (CGs) of persons with dementia, excluding respite care, and provide recommendations to clinicians. ⋯ Some CG interventions can reduce CG psychological morbidity and help people with dementia stay at home longer. Programs that involve the patients and their families and are more intensive and modified to CGs' needs may be more successful. Future research should try to improve clinicians' abilities to prescribe interventions.
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Comparative Study
Validation of the five-item geriatric depression scale in elderly subjects in three different settings.
To test the effectiveness of a five-item version of the Geriatric Depression Scale (GDS) for the screening of depression in community-dwelling older subjects, hospitalized older patients, and nursing home residents. ⋯ The five-item GDS is as effective as the 15-item GDS for the screening of depression in cognitively intact older subjects.
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To examine the association between muscle strength and total and cause-specific mortality and the plausible contributing factors to this association, such as presence of diseases commonly underlying mortality, inflammation, nutritional deficiency, physical inactivity, smoking, and depression. ⋯ In older disabled women, handgrip strength was a powerful predictor of cause-specific and total mortality. Presence of chronic diseases commonly underlying death or the mechanisms behind decline in muscle strength in chronic disease, such as inflammation, poor nutritional status, disuse, and depression, all of which are independent predictors of mortality, did not explain the association. Handgrip strength, an indicator of overall muscle strength, may predict mortality through mechanisms other than those leading from disease to muscle impairment. Grip strength tests may help identify patients at increased risk of deterioration of health.
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To examine psychotropic prescription use in community-dwelling elderly in the United States and its association with predisposing, enabling, and need factors. ⋯ Nearly one in five community-dwelling elderly persons used psychotropic medications, primarily antidepressants followed by antianxiety agents. Enabling and need factors were consistently associated with psychotropic classes examined, whereas most predisposing factors varied with the type of psychotropic drug class.