Personalized Cognitive Stimulation through Personhood: A Case Report on Dementia Diagnosis Acceptance and Therapeutic Engagement

ABSTRACT

Objectives: Dementia related cognitive impairment, as forgetting recent memories, brings several emotional challenges to patients and their families. This paper reports a case of a non-collaborative high-education level patient. who recurrently refused a set of conventional cognitive stimulation exercises, as he also was in refusal of his cognitive impairment. The aim of this report is to show the benefits of a personalized cognitive stimulation (PCS) program.

Methods: A24-sessions PCS program was conceived within a person-centered care approach and in active co-creation between the therapist and the patient.

Results: The results evidence the patient’s increasing therapeutic engagement in the proposed activities, along with mild cognitive improvement. This procedure also promoted a diagnosis acceptance and the patient’s mood stabilization. Two illustrative materials used in this tailored intervention are available as supplemental material.

Conclusions: Cognitive stimulating programs benefit from tailoring and personalization. Personalization indeed helped the patient feeling engaged and increased his participation in the activities. Furthermore, his mood stabilized, and the patient accepted his cognitive impairments. Thus, PCS is a way of reaching person-centered care.

Clinical implications: PCS may be used to improve patient’s engagement in the stimulating activities. Also, PCS promoted the dementia diagnosis acceptance..

KEYWORDS:

• Dementia care
• cognitive stimulation
• personhood
• personalization

Clinical implications

• Personalized cognitive stimulation is a way of reaching person-centered care;

• The personalized cognitive stimulation may improve patients’ participation in the intervention process and increase their engagement towards stimulating activities;

• The personalized cognitive stimulation may contribute to the acceptance of the diagnosis of dementia.

Acknowledgments

The authors would like to thank the patient and his wife. Also, we thank the Hospital de Magalhães Lemos, E.P.E. and Dr. Rita Maldonado Branco for her valuable support and “design perspective” throughout the process of conceiving the PCS.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Supplementary material

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed here.