Prevalence of Behavior Disorder and Disturbance to Family and Staff in a Sample of Adult Day Health Care Clients

Latent class-derived prevalence estimates of behavior disorder are provided for adult day health care (ADHC) clients; informal and formal caregivers reported 11% and 14%, respectively, of these clients as engaging in severe disturbed behavior (95% confidence intervals across sources are from 7% to 18%). The prevalences, estimated for informal and formal caregivers respectively, were 12% and 16% for affective disorder, 15% and 18% for cognitive disorders, 16% and 13% for verbal-vocal agitation, and 6% and 8% for socially inappropriate behavior. These rates can be contrasted with those of the institutional population which, while higher, overlap with the distribution of behavior disorder for ADHC community residents. The degree of reported disturbance to family and staff was similar across items.