Maintenance Cognitive Stimulation Therapy: increasing autonomy of people with dementia. A systematic review.

Blackground:Dementia, has a direct impact on the ability to carry out everyday tasks. Non-pharmacological therapies have shown a positive impact on improving cognitive functions, but the benefits in relation to the daily... [ view full abstract ]

Blackground:Dementia, has a direct impact on the ability to carry out everyday tasks. Non-pharmacological therapies have shown a positive impact on improving cognitive functions, but the benefits in relation to the daily functionality are less clear. The aim of the review is to determine what kind of cognitive stimulation approaches are adequate for maintaining the ability to perform activities of daily living.
Methods:A search of randomized clinical trials (RCTs) was performed to find all available evidence on the subject. A total of 11 articles met the inclusion criteria for the review.
Results:The majority of multicomponent interventions studies have shown the greater impact on ADL, in comparison to those tests that use some stimulative activity in isolation.
The cognition- focused studies, through interventions that use pencil and paper tasks in isolation, have not reported benefits in functionality,
The occupation-based interventions, which were directed to the stimulation of functional tasks and used compensatory or external support strategy training for the implementation of AVD, reminiscences or recognition of everyday tasks, have reported the positive impact on functionality.
Conclusions: Cognitive Stimulation Therapy (CST) for people with dementia has a positive impact on improvement or maintenance of skills, facilitating performance of everyday activities. The studies show that it is important to stimulate indirectly the cognitive functions, expecting a generalization of the implicit knowledge for skill improvement of the person, from other side, the contextualization of occupation should facilitate and improve transferability to a persons’ daily activities as well as global generalization to the daily life.