Hot spot identification method based on Andrews curves: an application on the COVID-19 crisis effects on caregiver distress in neurocognitive disorder.

Identifying and locating areas - hot spots - that present high concentration of observations in a high-dimensional data set is crucial in many data processing and analysis methods and techniques, since observations that belong to the same hot spot share information and behave in a similar way. A useful tool towards that aim is the reduction of the data dimensionality and the graphical representation of them. In the present paper, a new method to identify and locate hot spots is proposed, based on the Andrews curves.

COVID-19 Crisis Effects on Caregiver Distress in Neurocognitive Disorder.

Background: The outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic seems to have mental health implications for both people with neurocognitive disorder and their caregivers.

Objective: The study aimed to shed light on relations between caregiver mental reaction to the pandemic and caregiver distress related to neuropsychiatric symptoms, memory impairment progression, and functional impairment of people with neurocognitive disorder during the period of confinement in Greece.

Methods: The study included caregivers of patients with mild (N = 13) and major (N = 54) neurocognitive disorder.