A brief neuropsychological protocol for assessing patients with Parkinson's disease.

Mild to severe cognitive impairment and depression are common among patients with Parkinson's disease (PD) and play a significant role in disability. Effective treatment planning requires a holistic assessment of cognitive and emotional difficulties. A brief neuropsychological protocol was developed to examine the pattern of cognitive and emotional functioning of patients with idiopathic PD.

Validating the Berg Balance Scale for patients with Parkinson's disease: a key to rehabilitation evaluation.

Objective: To assess the criterion-related validity of the Berg Balance Scale (BBS) in subjects with Parkinson's disease (PD).

Design: Prospective, correlational analysis between the BBS and accepted measures of PD motor and functional impairment.

Setting: The federally funded PD research center, an interdisciplinary center of excellence for people with PD within a Veterans Affairs medical center.

Appraisal of Desire for Control over Healthcare: Structure, Stability, and Relation to Health Locus of Control and to the 'Big Five' Personality Traits.

This study addressed the question of whether the traditional tripartite distinction between cognitive, decisional and behavioral control is meaningful as applied to desire for healthcare control. Subscales of the Krantz Health Opinion Survey and the Autonomy Preference Index were administered to 680 undergraduates along with the Multidimensional Health Locus of Control Scales and the NEO-FFI Five-Factor Inventory. These measures were readministered to 523 of these subjects approximately seven weeks later.

Relation of diabetic patients' health-related control appraisals and physician-patient interpersonal impacts to patients' metabolic control and satisfaction with treatment.

Desire for healthcare control, health locus of control, perceived control over diabetes, satisfaction with diabetes treatment, and general personality traits were assessed in 54 Type 1 and Type 2 diabetic patients of the same male endocrinologist during a regularly scheduled office visit. At the end of the consultation, both patients and the physician completed a measure describing the interpersonal impacts produced in each by the other's control and affiliation behaviors. Patient success at diabetes control was assessed via glycosylated hemoglobin A1C (HA1C) level on the day of the visit and variability in HA1C levels across several visits.