ABSTRACT

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to investigate the effect of personalized reminiscence therapy on cognitive function, depression, quality of life and work performance on patients with dementia in the community. Methods: Total 24 patients with mild cognitive impairment(12 patients) and patients with mild dementia(12 patients) were randomly assigned to each group. Personalized reminiscence therapy was given to the experimental group and group reminiscence therapy was applied to the control group, intervention was applied to once a week for 60 minutes for 12 weeks. In order to verify the effectiveness of the cognitive function, the Seoul Verbal Learning Test-Eldery(SVLT-E), the Digit Span Test(DST), and the short-form Korean Version Boston Naming Test(S-K-BNT) were used. Depression, quality of life, work performance was assessed by the Short-form of Geriatric Depression Sclae(SGDS), Geriatric Quality of Life-Dementia(GQOL-D), Canadian Occupational Performance Measure(COPM). Results: In the immediate recall and delayed recall of SVLT-E, the scores of both groups were significantly improved, whereas the delayed recognition was significantly different only in the experimental group. DST did not show any significant change in both groups, and S-K-BNT and COPM showed a significant change only in the experimental group. In SGDS and GQOL-D, both groups showed significant scores before and after intervention. Conclusion: Personalized reminiscence therapy to patients with mild cognitive impairment and mild dementia was effective in cognitive function, quality of life, work performance, and depression. Therefore, it is expected that various individual approaches will be utilized in the application of community occupational therapy for dementia patients.