EFFECTS OF MINDFULNESS OF WALKING AND BODY SCANNING ON SPATIAL MEMORY IN PEOPLE WITH DEMENTIA

Abstract

The rising global ageing population needs more supportive care. Dementia has been identified as one of the serious health risks among the elderly and the prevalence of dementia causes huge health, economic and psychosocial burden. Dementia can be manifested with the decline of number of cognitive functions during old age making it difficult for the person to manage daily living. While memory domain is one of the mainly affected domains, the decline of spatial memory capacities very common. As a Non-pharmacological approach mindfulness has become increasingly popular but have presented with mixed results. The objective of the present study was to examine whether the mindfulness of body scanning and walking improve the spatial memory of people with dementia. Adopting a Randomized Controlled Trial, through a process of multi-stage cluster sampling, the researcher screened 434 participants using Sinhala validation of Mini Mental State Examination. Sixty (N=60) persons clinical sample was selected as those having dementia and they were Randomized into two experimental groups of mindfulness of body scanning and walking. The spatial memory assessment was done using the Rey-Osterrieth Complex figure test during pre and post testing. The analysis of main effects using Mixed-method ANOVA showed that there is a statistically significant difference between pre and post spatial memory scores. Between subject results were insignificant. The T-test and One Way ANOVA analysis showed differences of spatial memory scores based on Gender, Level of Education and Age were also not significant. Conclusions have been made based on the results that though the post-test scores show an increase, two mindfulness interventions have failed to show substantive changes in spatial memory. it was also concluded that this study can be considered a good endeavor of a pilot study on dementia research activity in Sri Lanka with the possibility of extending it into a highly controlled clinical trial in the future with an adequate sample size, minimized effects of extraneous factors such as assessment bias and intervention bias.