Evidence-Based Guideline: Individualized Music for Persons with Dementia (7th Edition) — Non-Pharmacological Intervention for Agitation

Individualized music is a non-pharmacological intervention for the management of agitation in persons with dementia. It issupported by the Middle-Range Theory of Individualized Music Intervention for Agitation (IMIA), including testable propositions.The Evidence-Based Guideline: Individualized Music for Persons with Dementia (PWD) was originally published in 1996, hasrecently been updated and is now in its 7th edition. The current edition is 81 pages in length and includes 144 references. Thisguideline provides the culmination of over 30 years of research and clinical implementation. The guideline provides a gradingschema for the strength and consistency of evidence, with a step-by-step description of the intervention to insure consistencyin implementation and evaluation of outcome measures. The intervention is individualized at multiple levels, and is morethan simply playing preferred music for the PWD. The intervention emphasizes personhood by including the role of musicin the person’s life prior to the onset of cognitive impairment. This includes the role of music in the person’s ethnic identityand religious practice. The intervention has been empirically and clinically tested by scholars in an expanding number ofcountries. Individualized music is versatile and has been successfully used in home care, adult day care, assisted living, longterm care, post-acute care, and palliative care. As with previous editions, the 7th edition is available, along with all supportingdocuments and forms, as a free downloadable pdf.