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Abstract
Clinicians whose practice includes elderly patients need a short, reliable instrument
to detect the presence of intellectual impairment and to determine the degree. A 10-item
Short Portable Mental Status Questionnaire (SPMSQ), easily administered by any clinician
in the office or in a hospital, has been designed, tested, standardized and validated.
The standardization and validation procedure included administering the test to 997
elderly persons residing in the community, to 141 elderly persons referred for psychiatric
and other health and social problems to a multipurpose clinic, and to 102 elderly
persons living in institutions such as nursing homes, homes for the aged, or state
mental hospitals. It was found that educational level and race had to be taken into
account in scoring individual performance. On the basis of the large community population,
standards of performance were established for: 1) intact mental functioning, 2) borderline
or mild organic impairment, 3) definite but moderate organic impairment, and 4) severe
organic impairment. In the 141 clinic patients, the SPMSQ scores were correlated with
the clinical diagnoses. There was a high level of agreement between the clinical diagnosis
of organic brain syndrome and the SPMSQ scores that indicated moderate or severe organic
impairment.