A Study of the Effectiveness of Occupational Therapy for the Senile Elderly

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In the first part of this study, the effectiveness of occupational therapy intervention was examined through pre- and post- assessments the physical capabilities, self-care skills and social functioning of the elderly disabled patients in a geriatric hospitals and elderly facilities in Akita, Japan. The Parachek Geriatric Rating Scale (PGS), which was developed in the U.S., was used to evaluate the capabilities of individual patients. One hundred and ninety five elderly participated in this study. The mean age of the patient population of experimental group which consists from one hundred and eleven elderly was 80.3 years. For the control group which consists from eighty four elderly, mean age was 80.9. After PGS was first administered, occupational therapy (OT) intervention was performed more than one times a week, primarily using arts and crafts activities and sensory integrative (SI) therapy, as described by L.J.King, was added to the OT regimen. This group was divided two subgroups … More depending to the frequency of OT services in a week. Six months later, a second PGS was given to the same patient population. The Kruskal-Wallis Test were applied to three groups, and for each of the three categorized PGS scores, in order to analyze and test the differences of repeated measures. From the results, OT intervention appeared effective for two subgroups of taking OT service as well as for improving the basic physical functioning and activities of daily living skills of patients.In the second study, in order to study the effectiveness of occupational therapy (OT) intervention for the Senile elderly using single systems design (SSD), it is necessary to establish the repeated measures which should be free from the effect of repeated measurements. From the previous researches, it was suggested that the activities of daily living skills of the elderly were decreased as states dementia became more severe, just opposite against the developmental process of acquisition of these skills in normal children. We decided to use the subtests of the Japanese Version of Miller Assessment for Preschooler (JMAP) that was originally developed by L.Miller in the United States, and translated and restandardized by the first author, et al.in Japan, as repeated measures for this study. Results of the preliminary study indicated that four subtests of JMAP : Tower, Following Direction, Figure-and-Ground or Sequencing, and Construction of the Cube or Maze were able to use as repeated measures.Using these subtests as repeated measures, SSD was applied for the elderly to test the effectiveness of the intervention of occupational therapy. Orginally, nine elderly persons participated in this study. However, due to discharge from hospitals and facilities before gathering complete data, we could gather data from five persons. During the phase A,patients were assigned no OT intervention of regular OT intervention primarily using arts and crafts activities. Then, sensory integrative (SI) therapy as described by L.J.King was added to the OT regimen. This phase was called as B.The results of this study are shown in Table 3 and Fig.1 through 8. From the results, adding SI therapy to regular OT prescription for these patients was effective to improve the scores of the repeated measures except for Following Direction. Less