Effect of psychosocial interventions for community- dwelling older adults on their mental health and quality of life

The objective of this interventional study was to examine the relationship between psychosocial interventions for older adults living in a community setting and their quality of life (QoL) and mental health. A total of 286 older adults living in the community participated in this interventional study. Most of them (270; 94.4%) were women. The average age of the participants was 72.0 years. The following scales were used to evaluate mental health: GDS-15 (The Geriatric Depression Scale), GAI (The Geriatric Anxiety Inventory), RSES (The Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale), SOC-13 (The Sense of Coherence Scale). The OPQOL_brief was used to evaluate quality of life. Older adults were divided into four intervention groups (cognitive behavioural therapy, music therapy, cognitive training, and reminiscence). After psychosocial interventions, significant improvements were found in all variables in the whole sample, with improvements observed across all four intervention modalities (CBT, cognitive training, reminiscence, and music therapy), although the magnitude of the effect varied by modality and outcome. The greatest improvements were seen in the assessments of depression (Cohen’d = -0.65), anxiety (Cohen’d = -0.60) and the sense of coherence (Cohen’d = 0.58). Cognitive behavioural therapy showed the greatest improvement in QoL and mental health (anxiety, depression) among older adults in this non-randomised comparison. The use of psychosocial interventions may be associated with improved health related QoL and mental health in older adults, with cognitive behavioural therapy showing the greatest improvement in this non-randomised sample; however, these findings should be confirmed by randomised controlled trials before conclusions about the relative effectiveness of individual interventions can be drawn.