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OBJECTIVES: To test the efficacy of an individualized social activity intervention (ISAI) on decreasing daytime sleep, improving nighttime sleep, and lowering the day/night sleep ratio and to determine its cost. DESIGN: Pretest/posttest randomized with an experimental and control group. SETTING: Seven nursing homes. PARTICIPANTS: One hundred forty-seven residents with dementia. INTERVENTION: One to 2 hours of individualized social activities for 21 consecutive days. MEASUREMENTS: Twenty-four-hour sleep/wake patterns using an Actigraph. RESULTS: The ISAI group had significantly less daytime sleep (P=. 001) and a lower day/night sleep ratio (P=. 03) than the control group, after adjusting for baseline values. Because 40% of the sample slept 7 or more hours at night, a secondary analysis was conducted. When only those residents with a sleep efficiency of less than 50% (n=50) were included, the ISAI group (n=20) had less daytime sleep (P=. 005), a lower day/night sleep ratio (P=. 02), fell asleep faster (P=. 03), and were awake less at night (P=. 04) than the control group (n=30), after adjusting for baseline values. The weekly cost of the ISAI was roughly 70 per participant. Initial training and supply costs were 1, 944. CONCLUSION: The ISAI provides an alternative to medications, without side effects.
Richards et al. (Thu,) studied this question.