Effect Of Cognitive-stimulation Therapy On The Cognition And Quality Of Life For People With Elderly Dementia

Elderly dementia has become one kind of important diseases which heavily affected the health and the quality of life of older people. As the pathogeny of elderly dementia is not clear, the specific therapy is absent. Appropriate psychosocial interventions for older people with elderly dementia could postpone the course of disease; improve the quality of life and cognition. Although many kinds of psychosocial interventions have been using in clinics, each intervention has some extent limitation. There was little study on synthetically individualized psychosocial interventions at present. As the CST that was one kind of synthetically individualized psychosocial interventions just applied in clinics, the effects of it need to be further tested. Therefore we designed the double-blinded, randomized trial to study the effect of CST on the cognition and quality of life of people with elderly dementia.Objectives:①To test the hypothesis that Cognitive-stimulation Therapy (CST) for people with elderly dementia would benefit cognition and quality of life.②To observe the duration and trend of effect of CST.Methods:A total of 60 patients qualified to the entering conditions were divided into control group and experiment group randomly. Two groups both received routine treatment and nursing care. In addition, the experiment group was given CST intervention continuously in 6 weeks. The frequency of intervention is 2 times each week. Each intervention lasted 30 minutes. The score of MMSE, SCAG, ADL, HDS, and QOL were measured before intervention, the finished week of CST and at the 1st w,2nd w,3rd w,4th w and 5th w after intervention. The control group was measured as same as the CST group.Results:The CST group had significantly improved relative to the control group on the MMSE (P<0.01), QOL (P<0.01), HDS (P<0.01), SCAG (P<0.01) after intervention. There was no significant difference between CST and control group on ADL (P>0.05) before and after intervention. There was a continuous, significant improvement on cognitive function (MMSE P<0.01 HDS P<0.01), quality of life (QOL P<0.01) and general condition (SCAG P<0.01) for those receiving CST as compared to itself before intervention. There was also no significant difference on ADL (P>0.05). The effect of CST could maintain for around 4 weeks after intervention and decreased gradually. Compared with before intervention, there was no significant difference on each questionnaire (MMSE, QOL, HDS, SCAG, P>0.05) at 5th week after intervention. There was no significant difference on each questionnaire of gender, age and education background after intervention (MMSE, QOL, HDS, SCAG,ADL P>0.05).Conclusion:Cognitive-stimulation Therapy could improve both cognition and quality of life of people with elderly dementia. CST has no effect on ADL for patients with elderly dementia. The effects of CST could maintain for around 4 weeks.