Abstract
Background: Dementia is a common mental disease of the elderly. Around 90% of them with dementia have behavioral or emotional problems, which will restrict their social life. Group reminiscence therapy (GRT) encourages the demented elderly to share their living experiences. Some studies indicated GRT can improve elders’ mental health statuses. However, the outcome of this research is not consistent. Objective: This study aims to test whether GRT can improve apathetic and anti-social problems in the demented elderly in day care wards. Methods: This research adopted Purposive Sampling. Seven 65 years and above aged people with clinical dementia rating from 0.5 to 2, apathetic and anti-social problems were selected to have the GRT. The GRT is conducted for 50 minutes, every week and for 8 weeks. Mini Mental State Examination (MMSE) was used in pretest and posttest (8th week). Every week, the researcher observed and recorded the group's attention, attendance, memory, interpersonal interaction, sharing times, levels of participation and enjoyment. Results: The result showed that the mean of MMSE slightly increased after GRT. In addition, the research found that the post-test scores of disorientation in few participants slightly increased but also the group's concentration raised to around 40 or 60 minutes. Finally, the result also showed the group participated more actively in the therapy than before. Discussion: The demented elderly usually focus more on things associated with them, such as memories in childhood, history of struggling, and freedom to speak. In these programs, the numbers of interaction and sharing, levels of participation and enjoyment that the group had were more than before. All of them would maintain and retard degeneration of cognitive function. Conclusion: Appropriately implementing GRT can improve the demented elderly's communicational skill, increase interpersonal interaction, and maintain existing cognitive function.
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