Development of an assessment measure for sexual disinhibition in dementia.

Abstract

Sexual disinhibition (SD), a neuropsychiatric symptom characterized by sexually inappropriate comments and/or behaviors, remains under identified in dementia, possibly due to a lack of standardized assessment methods. A recent systematic review of measures used to assess SD proposed four behavioral domains and identified the need for a population-specific measure. The present study addressed this by examining the underlying factor structure of SD to create a new caregiver-report measure. Dementia caregivers (n=622) recruited online were randomly assigned to Initial Validation (n=311) or Cross-Validation (n=311) groups. Initial Validation revealed five behavioral domains that served as provisional scales for cross-validation, leading to measure development. The current study is the first to statistically evaluate the underlying factor structure of SD, resulting in a new measure that can help better characterize and identify SD.