Addressing Adventitious Behaviors Associated with Dementia

Dementia is an insidious disease process that prevents an individual from making sense of environmental circumstances. Cognitively impaired patients are at increased risk for falls, skin integrity issues, accidents, and wandering behaviors. Yet, as the understanding of this disease process and the behaviors exhibited by the dementia patient grows, there is a new focus on individualizing care and attempting to manage adverse behaviors in a holistic fashion utilizing mainly nonpharmacological interventions. It has been shown that the evidence-based best practices related to mitigating adventitious behaviors in the geriatric population diagnosed with dementia are associated to nonpharmacological interventions. Utilization of technology in the form of computers to implement music therapy, reminiscence therapy, and occupational recreational therapy was the selected evidence-based best practice to implement. The aim of the work is to show non-pharmacological interventions as an inseparable and complementary method of pharmacological treatment of working with people with dementia. (JNNN 2018;7(1):40–45)