Ethics code: IR.IUA.SHK.REC.1401.108
1- Departmentof psychology
Abstract: (18 Views)
Background and objective: Alzheimer's is a brain disease starting slowly and progressively getting exacerbated. It is the cause of 60-70% of cases of dementia. The most common initial symptom of this disease is disorder in short memory and difficulty in remembering the recent events. As the disease progress, other symptoms can include language problems, disorientation (getting lost), mood swings, loss of motivation, neglect of oneself, and behavioral problems. Alzheimer can affect one’s behavioral and emotional characteristics causing many problems for patients.
Methods: This is quasi-experimental research including a pre-test-post-test-follow-up design and a control group. The statistical population consists of all patients with Alzheimer's disease who referred to neurologists in Isfahan city in the second half of 2011. They were selected from the care and maintenance centers by available sampling. From among them, 30 patients were selected as research sample using the overall deterioration screening scale. They were the patients whose disease was already diagnosed. The selected patients were randomly divided into two experimental groups and one control group. The research tools included Morris et al.'s (1993) Clinical Dementia Rating Scale, MMSE.
The first experimental group was treated with Solberg and Metir’s (2001) cognitive rehabilitation program called attentive rehabilitation of attention and memory (ARAM) and the other was treated with cognitive stimulation by Spector et al. (2011).
The first experimental group (group 1) received cognitive stimulation intervention in fourteen 45-min group sessions (twice a week) and the second group (group 2) received fourteen 45-min group sessions of cognitive rehabilitation intervention (twice a week). The control group were called by phone 4 times to control the social support bias.
The subjects completed self-report tools during pre- and post-tests and follow-up. Data were collected and analyzed by SPSS 26 at two descriptive and inferential levels. Data analysis was carried out with SPSS using variance analysis with repeated measure and Bonferroni's post hoc test at 0.05 significance level.
Results: The results revealed that cognitive stimulation intervention was effective on cognitive functions components (including time orientation, spatial orientation and language understanding and ability); however, the cognitive rehabilitation intervention was not effective only on attention and calculation elements. As to other components, neither cognitive stimulation nor cognitive rehabilitation were effective.
Conclusion: The findings revealed that cognitive stimulation and rehabilitation were effective on cognitive functions of the Alzheimer’s patients in Isfahan. Comparing the means revealed that cognitive stimulation was more effective than cognitive rehabilitation. In the other words, the cognitive stimulation was more effective on cognitive functions than what was the cognitive rehabilitation. Accordingly, it can be concluded that cognitive stimulation and rehabilitation help the Alzheimer’s patients to improve their cognitive functions.
Keywords: : cognitive stimulation therapy, attention and memory cognitive rehabiliation program, cognitive functions, self-coherence, psychological well being, patients with Alzheimer.
Type of Study: Review Article |
Subject:
Psychology
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