Psychosocial Interventions for Community-Dwelling People Following Diagnosis of Mild to Moderate Dementia: Findings of a Systematic Scoping Review

Abstract

National policies and evidence reviews recommend psychosocial interventions (PIs) as an essential support, particularly in the period following dementia diagnosis. However, availability and uptake of these interventions are comparatively low. One of the reasons for this is that clinicians lack information about what might be provided and the potential benefits of different interventions. This article identifies and describes PIs for community-dwelling people following diagnosis of mild to moderate dementia and presents the available evidence to inform practice decisions. A systematic scoping review was employed to map the evidence relating to PIs for this group. This identified 63 relevant studies, testing 69 interventions, which could be grouped into 6 intervention categories: 20 cognition-oriented, 11 behavior-oriented, 11 stimulation-oriented, 13 emotion-oriented, 5 social-oriented, and 9 multimodal. There were three targets for outcome measurement of these PIs: the person with dementia, the family caregiver, and the person-caregiver dyad. Over 154 outcome measures were identified in the studies, with outcomes measured across 11 main domains. The lack of a classification framework for PIs means it is difficult to create a meaningful synthesis of the breadth of relevant evidence to guide clinical practice. Possible dimensions of a classification framework are proposed to begin to address this gap.

Keywords: Psychosocial interventions; mild to moderate dementia; postdiagnostic support.