Personal attention the key to soothing dementia patients

6 September 2004

Agitated dementia patients are soothed by any personal attention -- even from strangers, a ground-breaking Monash University study has revealed.

The results initially surprised the Aged Mental Health Research Group, which had been expecting distressed patients would be most calmed by the taped voices of family recounting happy memories.

But instead, the simulated presence therapy project revealed patients were almost equally soothed by the taped non-emotive voice of a researcher through headphones -- reading from a gardening book.

Researcher Mrs Barbara Eppingstall said the recorded reading from a book pacified patients more than expected.

"For many lonely, bored nursing home residents, even a tape-recording of a person reading from a book may be better than nothing," she said. "The apparent effectiveness of our 'placebo' perhaps reflects on the monotonous nature of many nursing home environments, suggesting that much could be done to alleviate residents' agitation and distress."

Simulated presence therapy was first used in a small study in the US in the early 1990s, but the Monash University research - headed by Professor of Old Age Psychiatry Daniel O'Connor, of the Department of Psychological Medicine - is the first to use a comparative placebo group.

The 'Personalised Approaches to Agitation in Dementia' study involved 30 residents of Melbourne nursing homes who had frequent disruptive agitated behaviours.

"We were expecting results to show that a recording of a relative recounting an event or memory from the patient's past - such as a favourite poem or a family anecdote - would have a calming effect when repeatedly played through headphones," Professor O'Connor said.

"But in fact, the findings suggest just paying personal attention to agitated elderly dementia patients is enough to calm them. It sounds banal, but it is actually very important - anything at all that is personal, perhaps even just putting on their headphones, helps them feel better."

Professor O'Connor said it was vital that research into dementia was well resourced.

"With our ageing population, it's a problem that is only going to increase -- by 2041, 500,000 Australians will have dementia, compared with 130,000 in 1995," he said.

Professor Daniel O'Connor and Mrs Barbara Eppingstall are available for media interviews on +61 3 9265 1700. For more information contact Ms Allison Harding at the Monash University Media Communications unit on +61 3 9905 2085 or 0408 812 301.