FUNCTIONAL STATUS AMONG PATIENTS WITH STAGE III PARKINSON’S DISEASE

Aims Of Study: The purpose of the study was to assess the functional capabilities of patients with Stage III Parkinson's disease (PD). Functional status of PD patients declines due to impaired postural reflexes and characteristic loss of balance which became evident at Stage III thus activities of daily living (ADLs) are compromised as the severity of the disease increases. Methodology:  Descriptive case series was conducted on stage III PD patients (n=64). Patients with age ranges from 45 to 75 years were recruited and patients with other neurological issues were excluded. They were assessed using a Functional independence measure scale having reliability 0.95. Results: Out of 64 patients, 75% required minimal assistance and 9.4% required supervision while performing the ADLs. Whereas, 81% of patients need 2 hours of personal care assistance according to burden of care. Limitations & Future Implications: Only functional status of PD patient is determined no exercise regime or intervention were incorporated to assess their impact on the PD patient functional activities. Thus, future studies should be carried out to find the correlation between aerobic exercises and their impact on PD patient level of functional independence. Originality: Information added was all taken from databases and reduced to similarity index and was not submitted to any other journal. Conclusion: Stage III Parkinson’s disease patient required minimal level of assistance while performing tasks of daily living. However, majority of these patients required 2 hours of personal care assistance on average per day to compete with daily living.

Psychopathology, Cognitive and Adjustment Problems in Women Burn Survivors

The objective of the present study is two folds. The first purpose of the study was the development and validation of scale of adjustment for adults in the national language of Pakistan i.e. Urdu and to estimate its reliability and validity. The second purpose of this research was to investigate the psychopathology, cognitive and adjustment problems in women burn survivors. In the first phase of this study, Scale of Adjustment for Adults (SAA) was developed and validated into Urdu language. In this process after the stages of item pool generation and expert evaluation the significance of the items was assessed in a sample of 100 adults’ age above 19 years in the pilot study. The results of correlation in the test retest administration of the pilot study retained 84 items. Exploratory and Confirmatory Factor Analysis supported the criteria of Adjustment disorder with specifiers of depression, anxiety and conduct disturbance and Aaron Beck model that include cognitive, behavioral and physiological reactions of individuals. The CFI value was .90 with the p-value of .00 that is less than .05. The results indicated a significant model fit with appropriate model fit indices. The SAA demonstrated high reliability (.938) at .01 level of significance. To estimate the convergent validity of the Scale of Adjustment for Adults (SAA) 93 adults selected from the city of Gujrat, Pakistan by using the convenient sampling technique. The convergent validity of the SAA was demonstrated via significant correlation (.626 at the 0.01 alpha level) with screening scale for adjustment disorders: Short form (Boer, Bachem & Maercker, 2014). The divergent validity of the SAA demonstrated no correlation (.058 at the 0.01 alpha level) with Coping Styles Scale in Urdu version developed in Pakistan (Zaman, 2015).The indigenous scale of SAA has found to be a reliable, valid and worth using instrument to assess adjustment of adult. In the second phase of study, research was conducted to explore the psychopathology, cognitive and adjustment problems in women burn survivors. The women burn survivors were assessed. To evaluate the predictive relationship of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), cognitive and adjustment problems 200 women burn survivors age above 19 years were examined. The following standardized tools were used for data collection as abbreviated Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder PTSD Checklist Civilian Version in Urdu (Lang et al., 2012), Montreal Cognitive Assessment Urdu version (Evans & Raiz, 2010) and Scale of Adjustment for Adults developed in the study. The linear regression analysis was applied to analyze hypotheses which indicate PTSD would be a significant predictor of cognitive problems, sub domains of cognitive problems, adjustment problems and sub domains of adjustment problems in women burn survivors’ age above19 years. Results reflected a significant predictive relationship of PTSD with cognitive problems [R²=.206; F (1, 198) = 51.213, p<.01], with Visuospatial and executive functioning [R²=.107 F (1, 198) = 23.780, p<.01], with naming [R²=.089 F (1, 198) = 19.426, p<.01], with attention [R²=.087 F (1, 198) = 18.797, p<.01], with language [R²=.039 F (1, 198) = 8.101, p<.05], with abstraction [R²=.066 F (1, 198) = 14.041, p<.01], with delayed recall [R²=.112 F (1, 198) = 24.959, p<.01], and with orientation [R²=.080 F (1, 198) = 17.256, p<.01]. Results also reflected significant predictive relationship of PTSD with overall adjustment problems [R²=.437; F (1, 198) = 177.589, p<.01], with depression [R²=.377 F (1, 198) = 119.731, p<.01], with anxiety [R²=.402 F (1, 198) = 133.235, p<.01], and with conduct disturbance [R²=.306 F (1, 198) = 87.145, p<.01]. These findings may have implication in the future intervention and prevention procedure for women burn survivors with PTSD symptoms and related cognitive and adjustment problems.