ORIGINAL ARTICLE e-ISSN: 2349-0659 p-ISSN; 2350-0964 Behavioral Changes and Cognitive Decline among Elderly Shephali Dixit, U. V. Kiran*, Padmini Pandey A BSTRACT An individual’s behavior is impacted by a complex interaction of factors such as cognitive impairment, physical and mental health, past habits, personality, and environment. The cognitive decline means that your brain does not work as well as it used to. This study aimed to examine behavioral problems and cognitive decline among the elderly. The research information was gathered using multistage random sampling from various locations of Lucknow city (U.P). A total of 100 elderly were selected for conducting the present study comprising elderly belonging to diferent ages and both gender. A general information sheet was developed to collect the general information of the respondents. A Revised Memory and Behavioral Checklist scale developed by Teri, 1992, was used to assess the behavioral problems among the elderly. Females were found to have severe cognitive decline and behavioral problems compared to male respondents. Cooperation from family members and counseling sessions may prove benefcial in improving the overall cognitive health of female respondents. Keywords: Behavioral changes, Cognitive decline, Counseling, Elderly, Psychological well-being Asian Pac. J. Health Sci., (2022); DOI: 10.21276/apjhs.2022.9.3.29 ©2022 The Author(s). This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/ licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. I NTRODUCTION A person’s physiology and psychology change with age as a consequence of aging. It is an instinctive situation associated with the aggregation of several changes resulted in residents’ exposure to variety of diseases (Singh et al., 2017). [1] Behavioral problems, frequently termed anxiety, as “an inappropriate verbal, vocal, or motor activity that is not the individual’s needs or confusion as judged by an outside observer” (Cohen, 2000). [2] Attention, learning, memory, language, visuospatial skills, and executive functions such as goal-setting, judgment, and decision-making are all cognitive skills. Congnitive imparement mostly identifed in elderly population (Sharma et al., 2013). [3] Depression, anxiety, insomnia, irritability, psychosis, wandering, elation, and agitation are symptoms of behavioral and psychological disorders (Vander et al., 2012). [4] An executive function that is known to decline with age is the cognition associated with the brain’s prefrontal cortex, which controls purposeful, goal-directed behavior (Monisha et al., 2020). [5] Several cognitive changes were observed with aging, such as slowing of intelligence, learning power, and memorizing, impacting personality, and emotional development (Knight et al., 1999). [6] The study’s main aim is to check the behavioral changes and cognitive decline in the elderly. The associated aim is to create awareness in society about the problems of the elderly and the support system to be created for them to make their lives comfortable. M ATERIALS AND M ETHODS Ex post facto research design was used to conduct the study. The respondents were selected using the purposive random sampling technique. The sample for the study was elderly people aged between 65 and 80 years. Subjects were selected excluding severely sick and disabled or having neurological problems, mentally retarded, and with any primary sensory defcit. Various areas from Lucknow were selected to conduct the study. To achieve the objectives stated above, the following tools were used for the study. Detailed socio-demographic data were collected using a socio-demographic scale that included age, gender, marital Department of Human Development and Family Studies, School of Home Sciences, Babasaheb Bhimrao Ambedkar University (A Central University), Lucknow, Uttar Pradesh, India. Corresponding Author: Dr. U. V. Kiran, Department of Human Development and Family Studies, School of Home Sciences, Babasaheb Bhimrao Ambedkar University (A Central University), Lucknow, Uttar Pradesh, India. E-mail: druvkiran@gmail.com How to cite this article: Dixit S, Kiran UV, Pandey P. Behavioral Changes and Cognitive Decline among Elderly. Asian Pac. J. Health Sci., 2022;9(3):145-147. Source of support: Nil Conficts of interest: None. Received: 04/02/2022 Revised: 27/02/2022 Accepted: 23/02/2022 status, education, occupation, income, family domicile, and the respondents’ place and duration of stay. The Revised Memory and Behavior Problems Checklist (Teri et al., 1992) [7] is a 24-item caregiver-report measure of observable behavioral problems among the elderly. RMBPC is recommended as a reliable and valid tool for assessing behavior problems in dementia patients. Interview schedules were used for data collection. Based on a pre-tested survey schedule, each location’s respondents were interviewed. The collected data were coded, tabulated, and statistically analyzed with the help of SPSS version 20.0 software. Then, it was analyzed in terms of means, standard deviation, t-test, and analysis of variance. R ESULTS AND D ISCUSSION Table 1 shows the demographic profle of the respondents. It is evident from the data that the signifcant proportion (42.01%) of the elderly was under 65–70 years, followed by 70–75 years with (36.0%), while only 22.0% of the respondents were from the 75 years and above age group. Another important demographic characteristic is gender. It is evident from the table that a signifcant proportion of the sample was found to be males (58%) while only (42%) of the respondents were females. It is also derived from Table 1 that the majority of the respondents (60.0%) were married, followed by widowers (22.0%) and the rest of 18.0% of the elderly women were widows.