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Centre for Policy on Ageing | |
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Humour therapy in patients with late-life depression or Alzheimer's disease
— a pilot study | | Author(s) | Marc Walter, Beat Hänni, Myriam Haug |
| Journal title | International Journal of Geriatric Psychiatry, vol 22, no 1, January 2007 |
| Pages | pp 77-83 |
| Source | http://www.interscience.wiley.com |
| Keywords | Jokes [humour] ; Psychiatric treatment ; Depression ; Dementia ; Pilot ; Switzerland. |
| Annotation | The impact of humour therapy on quality of life (QoL) in patients with depression or Alzheimer's disease (AD) was evaluated with 20 patients with late-life depression and 20 patients with AD. 10 patients in each group underwent a humour therapy group (HT) once in 2 weeks for 60 minutes in addition to standard pharmacotherapy, which was given as usual to the other group as standard therapy (ST). All patients completed a psychometric test battery at admission and before discharge from the clinic. The quality of life scores improved in both HT and ST groups for depressive patients, but not for those with AD irrespective of the therapy group. Depressive patients receiving HT showed the highest quality of life after treatment. In addition, those with depression in both therapy groups showed improvements in mood, depression score and instrumental activities of daily living (IADLs). Although the effects of HT were not significant, depressed patients have profited from it. The results also suggest that HT can provide an additional therapeutic tool. Further studies with humour groups that meet more frequently are required to investigate the impact of HT to gerontopsychiatric treatment. (RH). |
| Accession Number | CPA-070131219 A |
| Classmark | HKG: LP: ENR: EA: 4UC: 76C |
Data © Centre for Policy on Ageing |
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| ...from the Ageinfo database published by Centre for Policy on Ageing. |
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