Neuropsychiatric symptoms among people living with a dementia are common and often
distressing. Inappropriately treated or untreated symptoms result in unnecessary suffering,
1
impaired quality of life,
2
and immense distress to care home residents and families,
3
and their health care providers.
4
Because neuropsychiatric symptoms are common, care home residents living with dementia
may be inappropriately treated with antipsychotic drugs.
5
Although nonpharmacologic interventions are widely recommended, they are less studied
and weakly supported by current evidence. This leaves gaps in understanding and questions
about utility.
6
Strategies to manage these burdensome symptoms thus remain suboptimal. Understanding
current practices for nonpharmacologic interventions is an important first step to
guide testing, implementation, and wider use of such interventions. We (1) identified
sensory interventions for reducing neuropsychiatric symptoms and supporting protocols
or guidelines currently used in Western Canada and (2) solicited views and opinions
on the extent of benefit or harm to care home residents with these interventions.To read this article in full you will need to make a payment
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Article info
Publication history
Published online: August 26, 2021
Footnotes
This work was supported by the Athabasca University Academic Research Fund (ARF no. 23844) and the Muhlenfeld Family trust fund held by A.S.W.
The authors declare no conflicts of interest.
Identification
Copyright
© 2021 AMDA - The Society for Post-Acute and Long-Term Care Medicine.
