Counseling Clients with Mild Senile Dementia of the Alzheimer's Type: A Pilot Study

Counseling those with senile dementia of the Alzheimer's type (SDAT) is a new venture; previous efforts have focused on helping caregivers. Support of the clients' concerns and motivations for self-care has been overlooked. SDAT patients vary in severity of deficit, with a 14-year survival rate possible. Many remain at a mild stage for several years. Accompanying intellectual change is emotional discomfort, experienced as anxiety, fear, anger, and stress. It is not unreasonable to assume emotions affect cognitive performance adversely. We postulate that short-term counseling benefits clients by positively addressing feeling states that underlie behavior. In the present study, counselors used a profile of cognition derived from psychometric measures to provide information and to facilitate counseling. The two-step counseling model used in this study includes one session for the process of test taking and another counseling session to interpret results and provide support. From qualitative measures, we find that mildly demented individuals develop helpful attitudes, utilize coping mechanisms, and identify strategies to compensate for and deal with memory losses.