Promoting health in early-stage dementia: evaluation of a 12-week course.

This project tested a 12-week health promotion course for older adults with early-stage dementia. In a quasi-experimental design, participants were assigned by site to intervention group or control group and evaluated at two time points. Mini-Mental State Examination scores, Geriatric Depression Scale scores, health behaviors, plus several measures of psychological well-being were used in this study. In the independent samples t-test analysis, significant positive change was found from pretest to posttest for the treatment group on cognition and depression. A chi square analysis found several significant positive differences in health behaviors for the treatment group.