A Study on Pet Therapy in Nursing Home Residents with Dementia

• Main Authors: HSIAO, YI-AN, 蕭沂頞
• Other Authors: HWU, TZYY-LING
• Format: Others
• Language: zh-TW
• Published: 2018
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/jv5j2v

碩士 === 康寧大學 === 休閒管理研究所 === 106 === With the rapidly increasing aged population, dementia is one of common chronic disease. It will be a heavy burden on the family member. Although pharmacological interventions of the people with dementia are currently not effective and it is incurable disease, non-pharmacological interventions are known to be the first line treatment. This study is based on the program from Syu Dend Nursing Home. They conducted a pet therapy activity supported by Professional Animal-Assisted Therapy Association of Taiwan in 2016 and 2017. The pet therapy activities were taken once a week for 1.5 hours and six weeks per year. Totally 12 elderly people with dementia attended the activities. This study was done with a combination of qualitative and quantitative research methods. The results showed a significant improvement memory, orientation, judgment-problem solving, home hobbies of CDR(Clinical Dementia Rating), attention/focus, ability of movement planning and emotion of interaction with people/dogs of movement. But there was no improvement in the ability of expression. Besides, there was a positive correlation among movement, expression, and emotion.