Aging & Social Change: Ninth Interdisciplinary Conference

Abstract

There are twelve newly formed behavioral categories to classify behaviors in moderate to advanced Dementia. These categories were used to develop a new behavioral assessment inventory titled LuBAIR (Luthra’s Behavioral Assessment and Intervention Response). The reliability and validity of the LuBAIR Inventory was established in an earlier study, where it found that the LuBAIR was less labour intensive, more comprehensive, and offered improved categorization of behaviors into clinically meaningful categories. It was also found that the LuBAIR Inventory has comparable inter- and intra-rater reliability, and Construct and Criteria validity in comparison to BEHAV-AD and Cohen-Mansfield Agitation Inventory (CMAI). This workshop will seek to make attendees aware of these newly constructed behavioral categories, the ‘meaning’ or the ‘purpose’ of each of these categories, and the specification of each theoretical construct used to justify the formation of each of the twelve behavioral categories. Through the use of the principles used to understand the ‘meaning’ or ‘purpose’ of individual behavioral symptoms identified under each behavioral category, attendees will learn how to develop innovative behavioral treatment interventions. The advantage of the LuBAIR paradigm lies in its ability to collect more data, and allow data to be put under clinically meaningful categories in order to help understand the ‘meaning’ of observed behaviors in persons with Dementia (PwD). Its use should substantially progress pharmacological and behavioral interventions in Dementia and major neurocognitive disorders (NCD).