ABSTRACT

Baker, Robinson and Stewart investigated whether a commonly used screening test for dementia, Folstein’s Mini-Mental Status Exam is useful with African Americans. The sample was comprised of African American elders (n = 55) with a mean age of 78 years, and was 90% female. Subjects consented to be 6screened with the MMSE, and a week later were given a comprehensive psychiatric evaluation. Using an MMSE cut-off score of under 24 as indicative of cognitive impairment, 18% of this sample fell into that category. Using the psychiatric exam as the standard of comparison, the MMSE had a sensitivity of 70% and a specificity of 93%.