Juan Carlos Meléndez-Moral

Effects of a reminiscence program among institutionalized elderly adults

BACKGROUND Institutionalization during old age requires tremendous adaptability. Among the main consequences of the difficulty of adapting to the institutional context are prevalent depressive symptoms and low well-being. Reminiscence therapy has proven to be among the most effective at minimizing these outcomes. METHOD This study purpose was to investigate the usefulness of reminiscence intervention in an elderly, institutionalized sample. Following a group format, the intervention lasted eight sessions and compared a treatment group and a control group, using pre-post measures and a single-blind design. We predicted that reminiscence intervention would have a positive impact on depressive symptoms, self-esteem, life satisfaction, and psychological well-being. RESULTS Significant results were obtained, including a drop in depressive symptoms and improved self-esteem, satisfaction, and psychological well-being. CONCLUSIONS We conclude that reminiscence intervention yielded positive effects in institutionalized, elderly participants.

Análisis de las redes sociales en la vejez a través de la entrevista Manheim

Resumen es: Objetivo. Reconocer quienes son las figuras suministradoras de apoyo, psicologico e instrumental, en la vejez, asi como precisar si existen diferencias e...

Using a Cognitive Plasticity Measure to Detect Mild Cognitive Impairment

This study compared performance in two groups of older adults, one healthy and another with mild cognitive impairment (MCI), in order to determine whether or not they exhibit plasticity and to analyze whether or not plastic and non-plastic participants differed after a delay. To measure cognitive plasticity, the Spain-Complutense Verbal Learning Test (TAVEC) was applied to a total of 113 participants over 65 who were divided into two groups: MCI (N = 51) and control (N = 62). It was concluded that healthy participants performed better, but impaired participants also demonstrated some capacity for learning and plasticity, and it was shown that these improvements were maintained after a delay. Therefore, TAVEC seems a fitting, simple procedure with which to measure cognitive plasticity, and an effective indicator of impairment.

Comparison between Spanish young and elderly people evaluated using Rivermead Behavioural Memory Test.

ABSTRACT The first objective of this work was to compare scores obtained in the daily memory function between young and elderly people, and to check whether there are differences between the groups for each of the profile scores obtained in the memory test. A second aim of this paper is to study the relationship between everyday memory and age, while controlling for gender and educational level. The total and profile scores obtained in the Rivermead Behavioural Memory Test were compared in a sample of 60 young and 120 elderly people from Valencia (Spain). Results showed significant differences between the two groups: those between 18 and 30 years obtained a higher average than those over 65. Once the group comparison was controlled for gender and educational level, the statistical effect of age group disappeared. The non-significant effect of group can not be explained by the introduction of gender, because both its main effect and the interaction were not statistically significant. However, educational level had a statistically significant effect which may explain the non-significant effect of group in this new analysis. The main conclusion is the need to carefully control for educational level in all studies related with everyday memory and ageing, as the differences found could be due to generational differences more than to biological deterioration.

Resilience Patterns: Improving Stress Adaptation Based on an Individual's Personal Features.

Resilience, or the capacity to be able to develop oneself successfully despite adverse circumstances, has become a concept of interest in recent years. There is a clear relationship between resilience, psychological well-being, and coping strategies. This study looked at 890 subjects with a mean age of 46.77 (SD = 20.86) years, ranging from 18 and 95 years old. The participants were 40.6% men and 59.4% women. Using this sample, three clusters were developed by MATLAB R2010a and the Self-Organizing Maps toolbox. Two of these had high resilience, and the other one had low resilience; the psychological well-being variables and coping strategies were taken into account. Thereafter, multivariate analysis of variance showed a group effect for the resilience, psychological well-being, and coping strategies variables. Establishing resilient profiles based on variables such as psychological well-being and coping strategies reveals the best features for coping with stressful situations; this could help to promote nonpharmacological therapies for increasing resilience.