Paper
Saturday, November 3, 2007
88
Maintaining Older Adults with Dementia in the Community: A New Model for Peace of Mind
Linda L. Buettner, PhD, CTRS, SouthWest Florida Center for Positive Aging, Florida Gulf Coast University, Fort Myers, FL, USA
This study aimed to test the effectiveness of a continuum of community-based interventions in a convenience sample of 80 families in southwest Florida. Despite growing literature documenting success of health promotion interventions for chronic diseases in controlled efficacy studies, few interventions are consistently implemented in real world settings, and these opportunities are rarely offered to people with dementia in a stigma-free manner within their community. We developed the continuum of programs and evaluation methods in 2003-2005 as Phase I and Phase II trials in a large senior center. After baseline assessment, programs such as brain fitness, health promotion class, physical fitness class, therapeutic dance, and recreation clubs were offered to older adult participants based on level of functioning. The participants (n=80) demonstrated increased self-efficacy, improved mood, one third demonstrated improved scores on MMSE, and many demonstrated dramatically improved scores on IADL and quality of life measures after 12 months.