Insight Assessment Study
Research type
Research Study
Full title
Developing a structured assessment of insight into memory and thinking symptoms.
IRAS ID
309090
Contact name
Catherine Pennington
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
ACCORD: Academic and Clinical Central Office for Research and Development
Duration of Study in the UK
2 years, 5 months, 31 days
Research summary
Dementia is increasingly common. It is extremely common for people with established dementia and those who are at high risk of developing dementia to have altered awareness of their memory and thinking symptoms. This typically takes the form of affected individuals under-estimating the extent of their memory and thinking difficulties. This can delay presentation to medical services, or result in people refusing assessment and treatment. Individuals may put themselves and others at risk by continuing to engage in activities they can no longer safely do – such as driving, or using kitchen appliances.
In current clinical practice, symptom awareness tends to be only informally assessed – based on comments made by close informants, and the judgement of the clinician. This can be misleading, particularly when an informant history is not available or is limited. The primary aim of this study is to develop a short, structured symptom awareness assessment tool which can be easily used in cognitive clinics. Secondary aims are to investigate the knowledge and beliefs about symptom awareness held by professional and lay people, and develop accessible information resources on this important topic.
A new questionnaire will be developed to assess symptom awareness. The questionnaire is given to an individual, and to someone who knows them well. We will compare the answers given by the individual and the informant, to look for differences in the responses, which would indicate altered awareness of symptoms. The questionnaire will be tested firstly on a group of older adults with mild memory symptoms. Their results and feedback will be used to adjust the questionnaire. We will then test the questionnaire on adults with mild memory symptoms, and adults with mild dementia. Participants will also complete a clinical history assessment, and a computer based battery of memory and thinking tests.REC name
West of Scotland REC 1
REC reference
22/WS/0024
Date of REC Opinion
9 Mar 2022
REC opinion
Favourable Opinion