Music Therapy in Dementia Patients: A Comparison with Touch Therapy

Running head: Music Therapy in dementia patients
Music Therapy in dementia patients
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1Music Therapy in dementia patients
Introduction
Dementia is a global issue giving rise to high prevalence rate ad limitations of the
drug effects. In most of the cases pharmacological interventions often brings about adverse
drug reactions and other conditions such as delirium, constipation and other health issues.
Due to this reason, the non-pharmacological interventions are of utmost importance
(Vasionytė and Madison 2013). Complementary treatments such as music therapies, massage
and touch therapy has been found to be effective in minimising agitation in the elderly
dementia patients.
Aim:
Although both touch therapy and music therapy are considered as alternative
treatment options for mitigating agitation and anxiety in the elderly dementia patient. This
paper would exclusively compare the effectiveness of the music therapy and the touch
therapy that can be
Helpful in future nursing practice to introduce music therapy in the clinical nursing.
Structure
All the key points has been arranged in the following order-
 Rationale for choosing the topic
 Designing a proper clinical question
 Evidence based practice on the use of music therapy to decrease anxiety in
the dementia patient using the PICO table
 Suitable search strategies related to the topic- inclusion of the key terms and
the databases from where the papers have been chosen.
 Literature review based upon the quantitative literatures found upon search.

2Music Therapy in dementia patients
 Finally a conclusion based up the findings from the quantitative literature
with implications to practice
Scope of the assignment
All the papers will be chosen will concentrate on elderly dementia patients and would
not take in to consideration the other comorbidities associated to anxiety in the dementia
patients in hospitals or residential care or institutionalised settings. The literature review will
be based only on the basis of the English articles between the years. All the papers that has
been chosen are quantitative studies based upon the effect of music therapy and touch therapy
in the dementia patients.
Thesis statement
In this paper it will be argued that music therapy is more effective than touch therapy
in treating anxiety in elderly adults with dementia.
Justification of the topic
Dementia is a common chronic condition that is due to degeneration of the brain
tissues. Prevalence of agitation and anxiety in the dementia patients in common irrespective
of whether they are staying up at home or are institutionalised (Ridder et al., 2013). However
treatment of the agitated behaviour of the patients can be done by both pharmacological and
non-pharmacological interventions. However, drug interventions are much limited and are
accompanied by several side effects that increases the mortality in the patients, increased
prevalence of cerebrovascular accidents and increasing the declination of the cognitive
functions. Hence non pharmacological interventions are being tried in a wide number of
nations to treat the elderly dementia patient with agitation and anxiety. Hence several

3Music Therapy in dementia patients
complimentary therapies such as music therapy, massage therapy, pet assisted therapy are in
vogue, for treating dementia patients. However, researches are still going on regarding the
validity of these treatments or their advantage over the antidepressant medicines with respect
to cost and side effects. Among the various complementary therapies, many researches have
been done in order to prove the effectiveness of music therapy over other complementary
therapies (Ridder et al., 2013). Music therapy has been found to enhance the sensory
wellbeing by the reduction of the agitation, anxiety and depression. Music containing
meaningful lyrics can trigger memories that are connected to their life. The main rationale
for this topic is that such a research work would be able to quest the truth behind the use of
the complementary therapies. Such practices can also have future nursing implications as
music therapies can be introduced as a part of the nursing interventions in clinical settings
can also be used as treatment options as music can evoke emotions and might help the patient
in recalling his/her loved ones.
Evidence based practice and clinical decision making
Evidence based practice can be defined as the use of the best current practices to
make suitable clinical decisions. There are currently no standard formula of how the
credibility of the factors be weighed in the clinical decision making process. There are
several of rating systems or hierarchy to understand the strength and the quality of the
research. The evidence obtained from the randomised control trials, meta-analysis and
various clinical practice guidelines based on the systematic reviews of the RCTs are taken as
the highest levels of evidence (Aigen 2015). Hence, we would exclusively focus upon the
randomised trials and cohort studies to find out the effectiveness of music therapy over touch
therapy in the dementia patients. In most of the cases the RCTs determine the whether the
anxiety level has been decreased after the music interventions or not.