Occupational therapy to learn how to perform tasks around the house improved the lives of people with dementia, as well as helping their caregivers, researchers have found.
Dementia such as Alzheimer's disease not only affects patients and their caregivers but it also drives up costs of health-care and social services in developed countries as people lose independence.
Current drugs do not improve the symptoms of dementia.
To test the effectiveness of occupational therapy on the daily functioning of people with dementia, Dutch researchers randomly assigned 135 patients with mild to moderate dementia and their caregivers to receive occupational therapy sessions or no therapy.
"Occupational therapy improved patients' daily functioning and reduced the burden on the caregiver, despite the patients' limited learning ability," the researchers said.
The findings may change the perceptions of public health-care systems and private insurance companies that turn down payments for occupational therapy for people with dementia, assuming they have poor rehabilitation potential.
People in the treatment group received 10 home-based sessions over five weeks with experienced occupational therapists who taught techniques to cope with mental decline.
About 75 per cent of patients who received the therapy showed improved motor skills, and 82 per cent needed less help with daily tasks, Maud Graff, of the University Medical Center Nijmegen, Netherlands, and colleagues report in Friday's BMJ Online First.
Lasting benefits
Among the group who did not receive training, 10 per cent showed similar improvements.
Caregivers who were also taught the coping methods reported feeling more competent, as well.
The benefits lasted at 12 weeks, or seven weeks after the therapy program was completed, the researchers said.
"Because outcomes such as improvement in activities of daily living and sense of competence are associated with a decrease in need for assistance, we believe that, in the long term, occupational therapy will result in less dependence on social and health-care resources and less need for institutionalization," the team concluded.
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