Article of the month

The Interdem website committee selects an Interdem ‘ Publication of the month’. This is a recent scientific paper, written by Interdem members that will be put in the spotlights because of its innovative character, methodological soundness, impact, or discussion of relevant psychosocial interventions in dementia.

Pubmed will be searched for potential publications of the month and Interdem members may also send relevant new publications to the website committee (a.barbosa@bradford.ac.uk).

Website committee members cannot vote for an article they co-authored.

For publication of the month February, the website committee selected the following publication:

van der Steen JT, van der Wouden JC, Methley AM, Smaling HJ A, Vink AC, Bruinsma MS. Music-based therapeutic interventions for people with dementia. Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews, 2025, Issue 3. Art. No.: CD003477. DOI: 10.1002/14651858.CD003477.pub5
This Cochrane review assesses the effects of music‐based therapeutic interventions for people with dementia on emotional well‐being (including quality of life), mood disturbance or negative affect (i.e. depressive symptoms and anxiety), behavioural problems (i.e. overall behavioural problems or neuropsychiatric symptoms, and more specifically agitation or aggression), social behaviour and cognition, at the end of therapy and four or more weeks after the end of treatment, and to assess any adverse effects.Results suggest that: a) When compared to usual care, providing people with dementia with at least five sessions of a music‐based therapeutic intervention probably improves depressive symptoms and may improve overall behavioural problems at the end of treatment; b) When compared to other activities, music‐based therapeutic interventions may improve social behaviour at the end of treatment. No conclusions can be reached about the outcome of anxiety as the certainty of the evidence is very low; c) There may be no effects on other outcomes at the end of treatment. There was no evidence of long‐term effects from music‐based therapeutic interventions; d) Adverse effects may be rare, but the studies were inconsistent in their reporting of adverse effects; and e) Future studies should examine the duration of effects in relation to the overall duration of treatment and the number of sessions.

 

For publication of the month February, the website committee selected the following publication:

Gonçalves-Pereira M, Marques MJ, Alves RF, Jelley H, Wolfs C, Meyer G, Bieber A, Irving K, Hopper L, Zanetti O, Portolani DM, Selbaek G, Røsvik J, Sköldunger A, Sjölund BM, de Vugt M, Verhey F, Woods B. (2025) Sense of coherence, subjective burden, and anxiety and depression symptoms in caregivers of people with dementia: Causal dynamics unveiled by a longitudinal cohort study in Europe. J Affect Disord. 15;373:1-11. doi: 10.1016/j.jad.2024.12.078.

In this article a large cohort of 451 dyads of community-dwelling people with mild-moderate dementia and their caregivers was followed for one year. Causal relations were studied between sense of coherence, burden, depression and anxiety of caregivers. Sense of coherence levels remained stable after twelve months, while caregiver burden and anxiety and depression symptoms increased. Findings were consistent with sense of coherence potential protective role against burden and psychological morbidity. However, they also supported reverse causality regarding part of the associations. Caregivers’ sense of coherence levels may be directly influenced by subjective burden and psychological morbidity.

 

For publication of the month January, the website committee selected the following publication:

Dröes RM, McDermott O, Dassen FCM, Verhey FRJ, Orrell M. (2025). Best practice guidance to improve the design, effectiveness and implementation of technology for people with dementia. Aging Mental Health; 29(1):1-3. doi: 10.1080/13607863.2024.2379422. 

This paper focuses on the web-based Best Practice Guidance for Human Interaction with Technology in Dementia, which provides recommendations on how to improve, evaluate and implement needs-based technology that is usable and effective for people with dementia, their caregivers, and care and welfare services providing care and support. The Best Practice Guidance is based on the research conducted in the Marie Sklodowska Curie Innovative Training Networks INDUCT and DISTINCT . It is a dynamic document that has been updated yearly since it was launched in 2019 and aims to be updated when new insights are available in this continuously growing field.