Associations between behavior disorders and health status among older adults with intellectual disability

Abstract

Few studies have examined the relationship of behavior and health status among aging persons with intellectual and developmental disabilities (I/DD). Behavioral disorders, which often are coincident with functional decline in older persons with I/DD, may be more related to medical morbidity than previously reported. This cross-sectional study examined the association between health status and behavior disorders with increasing age in a cohort of 60,752 adults with I/DD clustered into four adult-age groupings (21–44, 45–59, 60–74, and >74). Age grouping data suggested an association between morbidity and increased likelihood of behavior symptoms in all but the oldest age grouping. The magnitude of the association and trend varied by specific disease across age groupings compared to that found in healthy cohorts. About 25% of the adults with I/DD had psychiatric diagnoses and the frequency of such diagnoses did not decrease with age grouping. These results suggest that adverse health status may increase the likelihood of persistent behavioral disturbances in older persons with I/DD. Moreover, behavioral disorders may be sentinels for occult medical morbidity, which in turn may be responsive to intervention.

Acknowledgements

The authors wish to thank Craig Brown of the New York State Office of Mental Retardation and Developmental Disabilities for assisting with data analysis. This research was supported in part by grants from the US Administration on Developmental Disabilities and National Institute of Disability and Rehabilitation Research. An early version of this paper was presented at the First Biennial Meeting of the European Association for Mental Health in Mental Retardation, Amsterdam, the Netherlands, September 20, 1995.

Notes

*Classification of degree of intellectual disability was available on 52,406 individuals.