“Memory and related cognitive functions stimulation programs”: opinions and behaviors of elderly participants

Abstract

The aging causes decline in cognitive functions although the cognitive reserve can be optimized aiming to maintain and restore cognitive abilities. Positive results in the stimulation
programs with elderly people reinforces this idea. This work aims to identify the opinions of participants of memory stimulation program (MSP), developed by the Gerontology Laboratory of the Occupational Therapy Course at the School of Medicine of the USP. This is a prospective, qualitative, exploratory and descriptive study, that used focal groups developed in 2013. They were composed by sixty years old people or more, participants of MSP at 2010 and 2011. 21 elderly participated, 85.7% were women, 52.4% seventy years old people or more, 85.8% with more than 4 years of schooling. The participants reported current cognitive diffi culties, but they affi rm that the MSP provides strategies both to its compensation, reduction and acquisition of knowledge about the changes related to aging. The participants affi rm that MSP contributed to improved memory in daily activities and they brought up suggestions for its improvement, such as adequacy of MSP to demands of each elderly. Despite that some potential participants didn’t attempted to the study, it allow to obtain opinions about the MSP guiding their use as a strategy of Occupational Therapy.