A DEMENTIA-FRIENDLY VILLAGE PROJECT AND DEMENTIA AWARENESS, COGNITION, AND DEPRESSIVE SYMPTOMS

Abstract

The Dementia-friendly Communities Initiative will be launching on 2017, according to the 3rdNational Dementia Plan in Korea. That is an initiative to support public activities for people with dementia (PWD) by educating citizens and service providers at local communities about the nature of dementia and the proper management techniques to assist PWD. The purpose of this study was to designate and run a pilot ‘dementia-friendly’ village and to evaluate the effectiveness of this project. We designated a rural village located in Jeollabuk-do as a ‘dementia-friendly’ village. We conducted dementia partnership education for residents of local community members, including the postmen and students. To create ‘dementia-friendly'environment, some set of the mural with elderly familiar were painted on the walls of the village. And we operated an 8-seesion cognitive enhancing program composed of dementia preventing physical exercises and brain activities such as cup stacking, solving puzzles, making handicraft, and so on. The effectiveness of this project was evaluated as the changes in dementia awareness, cognitive function, and depressive symptoms. We also evaluated the satisfaction index of this project. The collected data were analyzed via Microsoft Excel 2010. We designated the So-Su village located in Buan-gun, Jeollabuk-do as a rural ‘dementia-friendly’ village. This project was carried out with a total of 24 people living in this community from August to November in 2016. The awareness of dementia in score showed no significant difference. MMSE-DS was higher in score from 22.6±6.9 to 24.5±5.6 after the project than before (p<0.01). Geriatric Depression Scale(GDS) score was significantly higher from 4.8±4.6 to 4.1±4.4 (p<0.05). Ninety-one percent of community members were satisfied with this project. Jeollabukdo Provincial Dementia Center designated a rural ‘dementia-friendly’ village and carried out a pilot study of the project. This project led to improving the cognitive function and decreasing depressive symptoms among residents. Satisfaction index of this project was high, 91%. But the improvement of dementia awareness was not achieved. It is thought that a more direct and experiencing education to PWD is needed to improve awareness of dementia in order to establish the ‘dementia-friendly’ communities.