Effect of Horticultural Therapy on Frontal Lobe Cognitive Function in Older Adults with Dementia

Background and objective: This study was conducted to determine the effect of a horticultural therapy program on frontal lobe function, which is a component of cognitive function, in the elderly users of an adult day-care center.Methods: Horticultural therapy programs were carried out once a week for a total of 8 sessions from March 8 to April 26, 2023. A total of 27 older adults with dementia were targeted, with 10 in the control and 17 subjects in the experimental group.Results: When homogeneity was tested between the control and experimental groups before the horticultural therapy program, there were no statistically significant differences in all items, including Go/No-Go (<i>p</i> = .393), Digit Span (<i>p</i> = .690), Word Fluency (<i>p</i> = .157) and Concentration/Distractibility (<i>p</i> = .169), indicating that the groups were homogeneous. The control group showed no significant differences in Go/No-Go (<i>p</i> = .132), Digit Span (<i>p</i> = .257), Word Fluency (<i>p</i> = .062) and Concentration/Distractibility (<i>p</i> = .180). However, the experimental group showed statistically significant differences in Go/No-Go (<i>p</i> = .001), Digit Span (<i>p</i> = .001), Word Fluency (<i>p</i> = .038) and Concentration/Distractibility (<i>p</i> = .007).Conclusion: Therefore, the experimental group had lower evaluation scores than the control, indicating that the horticultural therapy program had an effect on cognitive function in the frontal lobe. The process of analyzing cognitive function of dementia patients can be said to be an important process to predict potential intervention techniques. It is hoped that horticultural therapy for the older adults with dementia will be effective in improving cognitive function and that these programs will be actively used to recognize the older adults with dementia.