Behavioural Assessment of the Dysexecutive Syndrome (BADS)

B.A. Wilson, N. Alderman, P.W. Burgess, H. Emslie & J.J. Evans

The term ‘Dysexecutive Syndrome’ includes disorders of planning, organisation, problem solving, setting priorities, and attention and is one of the major areas of cognitive deficit that can impede functional recovery and the ability to respond to rehabilitation programmes.

BADS specifically assesses the skills and demands involved in everyday life. It is sensitive to the capacities affected by frontal lobe damage, emphasising those usually exercised in everyday situations:

• Temporal judgement
• Rule shift cards
• Action programme
• Key search
• Zoo map

• Modified six elements

The battery includes a 20 item Dysexecutive Questionnaire (DEX) that samples the range of problems in four broad areas of likely change: Emotional or personality changes, motivational changes, behavioural changes, and cognitive changes.

Validation studies show that BADS is sensitive to the everyday problems experienced by patients with brain injury, and a small study was conducted on people with schizophrenia to identify executive deficits in this group.