GUIDELINES FOR APATHY EVALUATION SCALE 冷漠评价量表指南.pdfVIP

GUIDELINES FOR APATHY EVALUATION SCALE I. Definition and measurement of apathy: The Apathy Evaluation Scale (AES) was developed to provide global measures of apathy 1 in adults and elderly individuals . Reliability and validity data are available for middle aged and older adults (2). Examination of individual items also provides qualitative information which may be of use in clinical assessments. The conceptual, clinical, and empirical background for the AES is presented in several publications (2-7). This background, along with descriptions of other applications of apathy and the AES, is summarized in more recent work (8-10). Essential aspects of this background are presented here as an introduction to the use of the AES. Detecting apathy depends on identifying specific changes in 3 areas: observable (overt) activity, thought content, and emotional responsivity. Decrements in overt behavior may entail subtle inefficiencies in the way people get their work done at home or at work. Or they may entail severe impairments in initiating and sustaining goal-directed behavior such that patients require prompting to perform personal and instrumental activities of daily living. The cognition of patients with apathy reveals a decrease in goal-related thought content. For example, patients will report, I have no plans, Im just not interested in much any more or I have little desire to do anything today. Diminished emotional responsivity refers to shallow, abbreviated, or unchanging emotion in response to goal-related events. For example, confronted with personal losses, health problems, or financial misfortune, patients with apathy will be described as emotionally indifferent, placid, inappropriately euphoric, affectively shallow or flat. Favorable events similarly elicit attenuated emotional responses.