The London Psychogeriatric Rating Scale (LPRS) was developed in answer to the demand for a reliable psychometric rating scale suited to a psychogeriatric population. All inpatients on a Psychogeriatric Unit (approximately 140 at any specific time) were rated with the LPRS every third month for an 18-month period. The 4 components of the total score include a measure of mental status originally derived by factor analysis. Predictive validity has been established in terms of various clinically relevant areas including the following: a) ward placement; b) outcome (continued hospitalization, discharge, or death); c) diagnosis (by scoring levels and progress patterns across time); and d) ability of the patient to function in, or benefit from, a particular treatment program. The scale has been used successfully to assess a given patient's progress quantitatively and globally over a long period.
As part of an interdisciplinary study of organic dementia, a psychologic test for assessing the degree of dementia--the Extended Scale for Dementia--was developed through the expansion and rescoring of the original Mattis Dementia Scale. Statistical analyses of the 23 test items resulted in a scoring scheme which includes the "weighting" of items for scoring purposes. The test was successfully administered to 90 subjects from 6 hospitals in the London (Ontario) region. With use of the Extended Scale, it was possible to discriminate between dementia and non-dementia groups of psychogeriatric inpatients and to correlate the findings closely with those of another measure of the degree of dementia, viz, the London Psychogeriatric Rating Scale (Ment.). Dementia patients who were retested after 6-month and 12-month intervals showed a significant decline in scores. No significant scoring differences were noted between males and females or between Alzheimer dementia and multi-infarct dementia.
This article attempts to illustrate how an existential ontology has a great deal to offer to psychotherapists. Because this complex interaction may often be difficult to see, three ways in which such philosophical work has been applicable and enriching in the context of a particular psychotherapy practice are presented. These include a) the use of existential themes and concepts in psychotherapy, including the notions of existential guilt, existential anxiety, and bad faith, b) the argument that an existential ontology provides a more suitable philosophical grounding for psychotherapeutic theories and practices, one which better describes the life-world, experiential phenomena in question, and c) the idea that an existential version of the mental status examination, centered around six key dimensions of human experience (derived from an existential ontology) can provide us with a more in-depth understanding of, and better description of, an individual’s experiential world.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.