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. 2024 Nov;23(8):1327-1353.
doi: 10.1177/14713012241260476. Epub 2024 Jun 20.

Effectiveness of interventions to prevent abuse in people living with dementia in community settings: A systematic review

Seelia Peter A  1 , M Mukhyaprana Prabhu  2 , Debbie Tolson  3 , Baby S Nayak  4 , Rajeshkrishna P Bhandary  5 , Binil V  6 , Elsa Sanatombi Devi  7
Affiliations

Effectiveness of interventions to prevent abuse in people living with dementia in community settings: A systematic review

Seelia Peter A et al. Dementia (London). 2024 Nov.

Abstract

Objectives: This review examined the evidence for interventions to prevent the abuse of people living with dementia in the community.

Methods: The articles were retrieved from 2000 to 2023 from six databases, including MEDLINE via PubMed, CINAHL Plus via EBSCO, EMBASE, ProQuest Medical Library, Web of Science, and Scopus. The research articles that focused on finding the effectiveness of interventions for preventing abuse of people living with dementia in community settings were included in this review. The review included randomized controlled trials and pre-test post-test trials only. The quality appraisal of the eligible studies was done using ROB 2 and ROBINS II. The findings were tabulated and narratively synthesised.

Results: Out of 1831 articles, only three were included in this review. Only two RCTs were included in this efficacy review. Both the studies showed that the interventions were not effective in reducing abuse. The studies utilised family caregiver interventions like psychological interventions and online supportive education. The review identified psychological interventions with some evidence. Another study was a quasi-experimental study that used dialectical behaviour therapy as an intervention to reduce abuse occurrence. The study showed low evidence and focused only on reporting of elder abuse as an outcome.

Conclusion: This review found very few studies and was not able to draw a conclusion on the effectiveness of interventions for abuse in people living with dementia. Given the paucity of research, there is a clear need to identify how to overcome the challenges faced in elder abuse research and further refine the development of approaches to reduce elder abuse among people living with dementia in community settings.

Keywords: community setting; elder abuse; interventions; people living with dementia; prevention; systematic review.

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Conflict of interest statement

Declaration of conflicting interestsThe author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Figures

Figure 1.
Figure 1.
Preferred reporting items for flow diagram. From: Page MJ, McKenzie JE, Bossuyt PM, Boutron I, Hoffmann TC, Mulrow CD et al. The PRISMA 2020 statement: an updated guideline for reporting systematic reviews. BMJ 2021; 372:n71. doi: 10.1136/bmj.n71. For more information, visit: https://www.prisma-statement.org/.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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