Alzheimer rehabilitation by students: Interventions and outcomes

Abstract

This article advocates proactive Alzheimer treatment, describes rehab interventions implemented by students, and reports positive first year outcomes for 11 mild to moderate Alzheimer's disease (AD) patients who experienced these interventions in a longitudinal Alzheimer rehabilitation research programme. Students supervised physical fitness training and volunteer work sessions for all participants and administered specific memory and language stimulation exercises to 7 of them (experimental group). Outcomes were measured by standardised and project-related tests before and after two semesters (about 28 weeks) of participation. It was hypothesised that (1) the experimental group would outperform the control group at post-testing on standardised and project-specific cognitive and language measures; that both the experimental and control group would (2) maintain or improve the quality of their spontaneous discourse, (3) improve on measures of mood, and (4) improve on measures of physical fitness. Hypothesis 1 was only partially supported. The experimental group improved significantly from pre- to post-test on two measures, substantially on one measure, and showed no change on eleven measures. The control group declined significantly on three measures and showed no change on eleven measures. However, between group differences were only significant on one measure. Hypotheses 2, 3, and 4 were supported. The major conclusion was that: multi-modal interventions by students can temporarily maintain or improve cognitive, language, social, and physical functioning of Alzheimer's patients.