Abstract:
Objective: Individuals with schizophrenia show perceptual-cognitive abnormalities. Besides, depression and anxiety is an integral part of the disease most of the times. People with mental diseases, while under institutional care, experience lack of control and choice in their daily lives. Sensory room is an environment in which individuals can choose, control and explore the stimuli around them. So, they can organize their responses to their environment and restore and develop their skills, interacting through it. Method: 48 people met the study criteria, who were evaluated with Lowenstein Occupational Therapy Cognitive Assessment, Mini Mental State examination, and Positive and Negative Syndrome Scale. Then they were randomly and equally assigned to intervention and comparison groups. Intervention group received sensory room intervention and comparison group had their traditional therapies. After 32 treatment sessions, 14 participants in intervention group and 7 participants in comparison group were excluded from the study and the tests were repeated for the remaining ones. Results: Findings did not show a significant effect of sensory room intervention on perceptual-cognitive performance and psychiatric status of people with schizophrenia (p<0.05) In reminding domain, however, results indicated maintenance of the skill in intervention group(p<0.05) and exacerbating of that in comparison group (p<0.05) Conclusion: No significant change in perceptual-cognitive performance and psychiatric status for individuals with schizophrenia during 3 month period of sensory room intervention was found, except for reminding which did not changed significantly in intervention group, but regressed in comparison group after the intervention period.
Machine summary:
Iranian Rehabilitation Journal, Vol. 10, No. 16, October 2012 Original Article The Effect of Sensory Room Intervention on Perceptual-Cognitive Performance and the Psychiatric Status of Schizophrenics Ara Shahgholi1; Ashraf Karbalayi Noori2; Seyed Ali Hosseini, PhD.
Results: Our findings did not show a significant effect of sensory room intervention on perceptual- cognitive performance and psychiatric status of people with schizophrenia (p> 0.
Conclusions: No significant change in perceptual-cognitive performance and psychiatric status of individuals with schizophrenia was found during the 3 month period of sensory room intervention, except for reminding which did not change significantly in the intervention group, but regressed in the comparison group after the intervention period.
The ability to absorb sensory inputs and to use them to interact with the surrounding world, to attend to things in a selective and focused way, to concentrate over a period of time, to learn new information and skills, to plan, to determine strategies for actions and to execute them, to comprehend language and to use verbal skills for communication and self-expression, and to retain information and manipulate them in solving complex problems are examples of mental processes that are referred to as cognitive-perceptual functions (1).
After 3 months of sensory room intervention, except for reminding, the scores of perceptual-cognitive performance and psychiatric status in schizophrenic patients had not changed in the LOTCA, MMSE, and PANSS with respect to the comparison group (table 2 & table 3).