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American Journal of Alzheimer's Disease and Other Dementias logoLink to American Journal of Alzheimer's Disease and Other Dementias
. 2001 Jul-Aug;16(4):211–224. doi: 10.1177/153331750101600401

Insight in Alzheimer's patients: Results of a longitudinal study using three assessment methods

Sharon Arkin, Nidhi Mahendra 1
PMCID: PMC10833994  PMID: 11501343

Abstract

Three direct measures of dementia insight were administered to 20 participants in a longitudinal Alzheimer's disease (AD) rehabilitation research project 1 and to subsets of these participants that completed one (N = 19), two (N = 12), and three (N = 6) years of program participation. The measures were: (1) responses to a discourse prompt question about AD (ADPQ); (2) endorsements of seven items on the Geriatric Depression Scale 2 (GDS) about the effects of dementia (separate analyses were done for two of the seven items that related specifically to memory and thinking); and (3) a sentence-completion exercise. Responses to measures 1 and 2 and the subset of 2 were quantified, tracked over time, and subjected to correlational analyses with age, Mini-Mental State Exam 3 (MMSE) score, and depression, as measured by total GDS score, and with each other.

Major findings: There were no decreases in insight from baseline to year 1, 2, or 3, as measured by free responses to the AD prompt question. There was a significant decline in insight from baseline to year one on the GDS measure, but no change from year 1 to year 2 and a return to baseline level at year 3. There was no correlation between insight and baseline age, between insight and MMSE score at any time point, between MMSE score and depression, as measured by total GDS score, or between MMSE score and depression score, except for the year 3 completers, where depression score was negatively correlated with MMSE score at year 3 only. GDS insight and ADPQ scores were not correlated. Several participants that showed no insight on the quantified measures did so on the sentence completions.

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*The program is known in the community as Elder Rehab because some participants or their families do not acknowledge an Alzheimer's disease diagnosis or prefer not to be publicly identified with Alzheimer's disease.

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