Agitation is exhibited by most nursing home residents with dementia and is a risk
factor for poor health outcomes. Identifying the antecedents of agitation is essential
for appropriate treatment because interventions require well-defined targets. This
study explored relationships between level of social interaction (high vs. low), the
premorbid personality trait of extraversion, and agitation using baseline data from
a clinical trial that tested the efficacy of activity interventions for agitation.
Most residents exhibited at least one agitated behavior over the 332 observation days.
Agitation was significantly greater under high social interaction as compared with
low social interaction (P < .0001) regardless of the extraversion score.
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Article info
Footnotes
This study was supported by a grant from the National Institute of Nursing Research of the National Institutes of Health (R15 NR 08148) awarded to the first author.
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© 2006 Elsevier Inc. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
