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Abstract
The day care centre appears to be a structure especially well suited for the management of mild to moderate Alzheimer patients. It constitutes a place in which performance in everyday life activities can be explored, and optimisation strategies can be installed before they are used at home. Another objective of the day care centre might also be to provide caregivers with support and ease the burden that the daily care of a demented patient represents. Finally, it may also help to alleviate the patient's loneliness. In this perspective, we describe the general organisation of the recently-created day care centre at the University Hospital of Liège. We also present the assessment and intervention programme which was conducted in this day care centre in order to reduce the generalised apathy and depressed mood observed in a 70-year-old Alzheimer patient (AM). This programme aimed at restoring a leisure activity (knitting) at home by proposing several adaptations designed to minimise the impact of AM's cognitive deficits on knitting activity. While an aggravation of her memory deficits was observed, the intervention significantly decreased AM's apathy and depressed mood as well as her husband's burden.
