Effectiveness of Retrospection Therapy for Elderly Patients / 日本農村医学会雑誌

ABSTRACT

It is said that retrospection therapy is effective in stabilizing emotional states of the aged and alleviating or holding in check symptoms associated with senile dementia. In recent years, the extended care facility of Asuke General Hospital has become so crowed with old people with dementia that it has become increasingly difficult to hold annual events on schedule. With the aim of improving the inmates' mental as well as psychological conditions, we more recently tried a retrospection therapy on a group of eight old people consisting of one emotionally unstable person and seven persons suffering from senile dementia.The group therapy was performed after ushering the old people into a private room with soft BGM played. In such a relaxing atmosphere, the session began along with a certain theme. For assessing the effectiveness of the therapy, 1) DMAS, 2) MOSES and3) NM scale were used. Apparently it produced some desired effects in every participant. Thus, the retrospection therapy proved to be useful. However, the results obtained varied depending on the kind of assessment methods. From this, we have also learned that there would be a risk of making an error of judgment with one assessment table.