The Gerontologist, Vol 38, Issue 2 189-198, Copyright © 1998 by The Gerontological Society of America

ARTICLES

Correlates of disruptive behavior in severely cognitively impaired nursing home residents

C Beck, L Frank, NR Chumbler, P O'Sullivan, TS Vogelpohl, J Rasin, R Walls and B Baldwin
College of Nursing, University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences, Little Rock 72205-7199, USA. cmbeck@con.uams.edu

This article provides information about correlates of "disruptive behaviors" among nursing home residents with dementia. We used averages of multiple observations for a wide range of behaviors (n = 45) across 11 months to gather this information. We placed behaviors into four separate categories: physically aggressive, physically non-aggressive, vocally agitated, and vocally aggressive. Then, we tested associations between these categories and demographic, cognitive, and health variables. Cognitive status and selected demographic variables were associated with the behavior categories; adding health variables did not improve prediction. Lower cognitive status was associated with more disruptive behaviors. Our findings suggest that cognitive status, but not health variables, predicts disruptive behavior among nursing home residents with dementia.

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