Psychosocial interventions, dementia, day care,
Background
Adult Day care centres provide an important aspect of care provision through all phases of
the dementia illness from diagnosis to the end of life (Dabelko HI 2008) supporting the wellbeing of both older people living with dementia and their care partners. Services within adult
day care settings are designed to provide biopsychosocial health benefits to participants as well as care partner respite.
Objective
To examine research studies, literature reviews and grey literature and identify and map the literature on psychosocial interventions used in day care services for older people living with dementia and chart their use, evaluation and outcomes. The research review question is
“what are the psychosocial interventions used in day care service for older people living with
dementia?” Psychosocial interventions are important non-pharmacological interventions
which support people’s wellbeing.
Methods
Inclusion/Exclusion criteria were identified and guided the search strategy. Participants
were people aged 60 years and over living with dementia attending day care services. The use of psychosocial interventions for this cohort was the focus of the review. Databases
were searched (Cochrane Reviews, CINAHL, Embase, Medline EBSCO, Medline Ovid,
Medline PubMed, PsycINFO, Scopus, Open Grey, Lenus and WHO Global Index Medicus
databases) using keywords/terms with Boolean operators from 2011 to 2023. Rayyan was used to extract and manage the data.
Results
The findings present a narrative and charting of the data from the 45 papers that met the
review criteria, and this data is mapped onto the five objectives. Within this review, interventions were grouped into five broad types: nature (n = 6 papers), memory/cognitive (n = 11
papers), social (n = 17 papers), animal (n = 4 papers), or physical/sensory (n = 7 papers)
based interventions.
Conclusions
This review has illustrated the wide variety in the types, range and facilitation of psychosocial interventions within adult day care services. This review highlights the potential benefits of these interventions. However, findings must be considered in the context that many were provided as brief intervention studies with little evidence of continuation after the study and further research is required given the complex and diverse range of interventions. Results
will be of interest to practitioners planning to implement or evaluate psychosocial interventions used in day care services for older people living with dementia.