Making sense of behavioral disturbances in persons with dementia: Latino family caregiver attributions of neuropsychiatric inventory domains.

The purpose of this study was to describe the nature and frequency of Latino family caregiver attributions for dementia-related neuropsychiatric symptoms. This is a cross-sectional study conducted in the Sacramento, California area. Participants were 30 Latino family caregivers of community-dwelling Latino elderly meeting research criteria for dementia who were selected from an ongoing cohort study of older Latinos (Sacramento Area Latino Study on Aging). Open-ended probes were used to elicit caregiver attributions for each symptom domain of the Neuropsychiatric Inventory. Across the 30 caregivers, 121 explanations for neuropsychiatric domains were present. Content analysis of these explanations revealed 7 different attribution categories (ie, Alzheimer disease, interpersonal problems, other medical conditions, personality, mental, aging, and genetics). Overall, Alzheimer disease was the most frequent attribution category but accounted for less than 30% of the total attributions. In conclusion, this study found that Latino caregivers were more likely to attribute neuropsychiatric symptoms to causes other than Alzheimer disease or a related dementia.