Psychiatry and Psychology Commons^™

Longitudinal Trajectories And Predictors Of Functional Impairment In Mild Cognitive Impairment, Alzheimer’S Disease, And Vascular Dementia, Lauren Z. Chisholm

Doctoral Dissertations

Functional disability in older persons with cognitive impairment is associated with reduced quality of life and greater mortality, health care utilization, and caregiver burden. Episodic memory, executive function, apathy, depressive symptoms, and medical burden have been identified as cross-sectional predictors of functional disability but have received little longitudinal investigation in a way that explicates how changes in these variables relates to functional disability. Functional disability also drives the distinction between the diagnoses of Mild Cognitive Impairment (MCI) and dementia; however, little is known about the rates of functional decline in these groups over time. This study utilized multi-level modeling to …