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Centre for Policy on Ageing | |
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| Neuropsychological characteristics of people living in squalor | | Author(s) | Sook Meng Lee, Matthew Lewis, Deborah Leighton |
| Journal title | International Psychogeriatrics, vol 26, no 5, May 2014 |
| Publisher | Cambridge University Press, May 2014 |
| Pages | pp 837-844 |
| Source | journals.cambridge.org/ipg |
| Keywords | Mental disorder ; Neglect [care] ; Self care capacity ; Hoarding ; Evaluation ; Diagnosis. |
| Annotation | Squalour is an epiphenomenon associated with a range of medical and psychiatric conditions. People living in squalour are not well described in the literature, and prior work has indicated that up to 50% do not have a psychiatric diagnosis. Squalour appears to be linked with neuropsychological deficits suggestive of the presence of impaired executive function. This study presents a case series of people living in squalour that examines their neuropsychological assessment and diagnosis. Clinicians from local health networks were invited to submit neuropsychological reports of patients living in squalour. These selected reports were screened to ensure the presence of squalour and a comprehensive examination of a set of core neuropsychological domains. Assessments were included if basic attention, visuospatial reasoning, information processing speed, memory function and executive function were assessed. 69 neuropsychological reports were included. 68% of the group underwent neuropsychological assessments during an inpatient admission. For participants where it was available (52/69), the mean Mini-Mental State Examination score was 25.29. Neuropsychological assessment showed a range of cognitive impairment with nearly all the participants (92.75%) found to have frontal executive dysfunction. One person had an unimpaired neuropsychological assessment. Results indicated that dorsolateral prefrontal rather than orbitofrontal functions were more likely to be impaired. Vascular etiology was the most common cause implicated by neuropsychologists. Frontal executive dysfunction was a prominent finding in the neuropsychological profiles of this sample of squalour patients, regardless of their underlying medical or psychiatric diagnoses. The study highlights the importance of considering executive dysfunction when assessing patients who live in squalour. (JL). |
| Accession Number | CPA-150529294 A |
| Classmark | E: QNR: CA: EPH: 4C: LK7 |
Data © Centre for Policy on Ageing |
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| ...from the Ageinfo database published by Centre for Policy on Ageing. |
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