Are Dementia Patient's Engagement Using Tailored Stimuli the Same? The Apathy Dilemma in Nursing Home Residents

Background. Apathy is the most frequent behavioural disturbance understanding how apathy drives engagement in resident’s activities of interests is a milestone to better understanding and tailored challenging interventions targeting engagement enhancement. Method. Residents aged 60 and older with dementia according to the ICD 10 from four nursing homes in the south east of France. A set of 25 stimuli were used and categorized by participant into Work, Leisure, Family, or Personal categories, an additional “not interested” category was used for comparison of engagement. The participants stimuli allocation was randomized in guided and unguided situations over a two-week period with 15minute interaction for each stimulus (=2) of each category (5×(15 min×2)). Clinical trial identifier: NCT01314131. Results. The mean age, 95% confidence interval (CI) of the 40 participants was 85.4 (83.8–87) with a mean MMSE score, CI95% of 17.7 (16.5–19). Analyses revealed a significant superiority effect of guidance over unguided interaction in duration of engagement in all categories of interest except for the stimulus category “family” and all <.05. Apathetic participants when guided had longer engagement duration in stimulus Leisure and Personal (all <.01). Conclusion. Guidance and better activities of interest can lead to enhanced engagement time in participants with dementia.