Despite the high prevalence and impact of anxiety in dementia, there is a paucity of research in this field both at the national and international level. From clinical practice it is experienced that there is a tendency to consider anxiety symptoms and anxiety disorder as a part of the dementia disease itself. Thereby anxiety symptoms in these patients often go unnoticed. The lack of awareness and inadequate screening instruments to assess anxiety in dementia may add to this problem. Rating Anxiety in Dementia (RAID) has found to be one of the most adequate instruments for assessing anxiety in dementia including patient’s own experience. Up to now, the RAID scale has been used in at least ten published studies of anxiety in dementia
Knowledge about how anxiety impacts over a period of time in patients with dementia is still scarce.
The main aims of the study are: To translate into Norwegian and validate the Norwegian version of the RAID scale for assessing anxiety among patients with dementia and to follow up 300 patients with dementia and anxiety over a period of one year.
In order to assess the reliability of the Norwegian version of the RAID (RAID-N) scale, the test-retest and inter-rater reliability of the RAID-N will be investigated.
There is no established “gold standard” for diagnosing anxiety in patients with dementia. The widely used classification systems, ICD- 10 and DSM- IV, do not allow for diagnosing anxiety disorders in the presence of an organic condition. For this reason, the comparisons between the RAID-N scale scores and the clinical assessments of the subjects made independently by a geriatric psychiatrist will be studied in 100 patients in cooperation with psychogeriatric outpatient clinics, old age psychiatric in-hospital patients, memory clinics and nursing homes. Patients with dementia with and without anxiety will be assessed by using the RAID-N scale by qualified and trained health professionals. The diagnosis from the geriatric psychiatrist will be used as “gold standard” to evaluate the validity of the scale and to find the most proper cut-off value for the RAID-N scale.
In order to test the internal consistency of the RAID-N scale and if there exist any subcategories, the RAID-N scale will be administered to a larger population of patients with dementia. Participants will be selected from a variety of settings in order to obtain a broad range of dementia severity, abilities and circumstances. Qualified health professionals from psychogeriatric outpatient clinics, nursing homes and in-home care will be trained to administer the RAID-N scale for the study purpose.
How does the RAID-N score correlate with the patients’ general health status, level of function, quality of life, stage of dementia and with depressive symptoms?
It is of relevance to investigate how the RAID-N score is associated with these variables and with depression. To do this, besides the RAID-N scale, following instruments will be administered to the patients:
1.General Medical Health Rating (GMHR) to assess the general health status.
2. Physical Self-Maintenance scale and Instrumental Activities of Daily Living Scale (P-ADL, I- ADL)
3. Quality of life as measured by Quality of Life in Late-Stage Dementia Scale
4. Depressive symptoms will be assessed by CSDD
5. Stage of dementia as measured by MMSE, CDR,
he changes in RAID-N score, and how does it correlate with the patients’ general health status, level of function, quality of life, stage of dementia and with depressive symptoms over a period of one year?
To study the course of anxiety, patients with and without anxiety as measured by RAID-N score will be followed up after a period of one year from the base line assessment and by using the same measuring instruments.
