Impact of the life review program on elders with dementia: A preliminary study at a day care center in southern Taiwan

Background: Life review, a type of reminiscence therapy, assists participants to seek personal value in order to enhance social status and maintain a high quality of life (QOL). Purpose: This study aimed to examine the impact of an adaptive life review program (LRP) on perceived QOL in elders with mild to moderate dementia at a day care center and assess the effect, if any, of different cognitive impairment levels on intervention outcome. Methods: This pre-experimental design used a single group of seven subjects for pretest and posttest and purposive sampling at a 2-week interval. Researchers administered to each subject a 10-day therapeutic recreation program modified from Tabourne's (1991) LRP. Results: Posttest results found no statistically significant improvements. However, subjects reported higher mean scores of perceived QOL as measured by the 36-Item Short Form Health Survey. This finding indicated a trend of improving physical and mental health after the intervention. In addition, subjects with moderate cognitive impairment reported a higher improvement in physical health perception than did subjects with mild cognitive impairment. Conclusions/Implications for Practice: Future research should include a larger sample size and a longer period of intervention and adopt multiple dimensions of QOL measurements to increase research rigor. Suggestions from this study can be used to improve the LRP.