Evaluation of a screening instrument for dementia in ageing mentally retarded persons.

The authors built the first cut-off rules for the Dementia Questionnaire for Persons with Mental Retardation (DMR). They tested it on adults with intellectual disability living in group homes.

The goal was a quick paper screen that staff can complete to spot early dementia signs.

The team set provisional rules: one score for mild ID and a different score for moderate ID. They did not report how often the rules were right or wrong.

The tool looked promising, but the authors said more work was needed before clinical use.

Evenhuis (1996) is a direct follow-up. The same researcher tracked the same residents for five years. The 1996 paper shows the DMR rules work: perfect sensitivity and good specificity for dementia in elderly adults with ID.

Carretti et al. (2013) did a similar job for frailty. They refined the Vienna Frailty Questionnaire and found strong reliability, mirroring the DMR refinement path but for a different aging condition.

Oliver et al. (2002) and English et al. (1995) both translated ID screeners into other languages. Like the target, they found the tools usable but warned that single-item agreement between raters is only modest.

If you work with aging adults in residential care, the DMR gives you a free, five-minute staff checklist. Use the 1996 cut-offs: seven-point jump on cognitive items or five-point jump on social items equals a red flag. Pair the screen with medical referral; do not rely on the DMR alone for diagnosis.