The impacts of visual Art Therapy for elderly with Neurocognitive disorder: a systematic review

OS IMPACTOS DA ARTE-TERAPIA VISUAL PARA IDOSOS COM TRANSTORNO

Leonardo Brynne Ramos de Souza leonardo.souza@ics.ufpa.br

Universidade Federal do Pará, Brazil

Yasmin Cabral Gomes

Universidade da Amazônia, Brazil

Márcia Goretti Guimarães de Moraes

Universidade do Estado do Pará, Brazil

During aging, a decline in physiological reserves, including those that make up the individual's cognitive performance, is expected. This process, called senescence, does not lead to functional losses. However, when old age is accompanied by impairments in the ability to perform activities of daily living (ADLs), then there is a picture of senility. In these cases, the neurocognitive disorder is included, previously named dementia ¹. The expected growth of elderly people diagnosed with this condition, as well as demographic aging, implies the adoption of multidisciplinary therapeutic interventions, which are necessary to approach these patients, considering the severity levels of the condition, for example ².

All historical documents confirm that the production of images, manual work, creation of stories, traditions, dances, and songs have always been a feature of life in society, as well as their use as escape instruments, entertainment, and even treatment ³. Since the beginning of time, when men had not even perceived themselves as such, art was already existent and present. When we mention art as a whole, we bring and imagine works that portray a historical, classical, and critical perspective, but that was not always the case. Previously, art served as a way of recording what was around, the first glances and perceptions of the peoples to inhabit the earth, and the records that were found in caves, especially in the region of Europe around 16,000 BC, where primitive people shared their stories through drawings made with natural pigments, such as tree bark, fruits, and animal remains — called Prehistoric Art, also known as Rock Art ^{4, 5}.

From this initial manifestation, humans began to feel the need for art in a constant and absolute way, either for their own records or to expose their ideas and thoughts, in addition to the continuous desire to share these reflections with their fellow men. Over time, art became indispensable and irreplaceable, present in all forms of poetic, reflective, and philosophical manifestations, as well as becoming synonymous with well-being, education, entertainment, and hobbies ⁶. Because of this, a long social discussion was formed, considering artistic processes as methods to regenerate human health and well-being, especially in the past century. However, there are few literary productions about the real effectiveness of art therapy, as it would be called later ⁷.

Art therapy is an umbrella term, which designates a group of human actions, of a mental integrative character, enhancing the individual, familiar, and communicative life of people through creative processes. It combines the principles of psychological theory and human experiences within a psychotherapeutic relationship ⁸. As broad as this definition, the concept of health is defined by the World Health Organization (WHO) as a state of complete physical, mental, and social well-being, but not merely the absence of illnesses or diseases ⁹. Bozcuk et al. cited the effects of art therapy on quality of life and the development of chemotherapy in patients diagnosed with cancer. In their results, art therapy was identified as a way to improve the quality of life of these patients, especially those who had no previous exposure to art therapy ¹⁰.

In the literature review, Stuckey and Nobel selected the works containing approaches derived from the concept of art therapy and divided them into four main strands: music therapy, visual art, creative expression based on movement, and creative writing. Among the results, there was a clear indication that artistic engagement would trigger positive effects on the emotional health and cognition of study participants. However, the methodological quality of the published works would limit more solid conclusions ¹¹.

Art therapy involves sensory and intellectual stimulation, which leads to different impacts on the neuronal cell processes of healthy elderly people or those with early or mild cognitive impairments from Alzheimer's disease ¹². However, it is important to mention that neurocognitive disorder is a clinical syndrome marked by cognitive decline, leading to progressive impairment in the subject's functional capacity. Although the most common is the phenotype behind Alzheimer's disease, it can also be classified into vascular dementia, Lewy body dementia, frontotemporal dementia, and Parkinson's disease dementia ^{13, 14}.

Physical exercise is an already consolidated therapeutic line for the prevention and promotion of health and independence in these cases. Physical therapy — through the application of exercises and other therapeutic lines — is widely indicated through clinical trials of strong methodological quality as a method of prevention against cognitive dysfunction ¹⁵. However, the population with neurocognitive disorder is generally considered difficult to manage by physical therapists, who have prominent training or education in the area. Furthermore, the cognitive factor has been treated as a positive index for the gains with therapy, considering that the physical therapy gains in patients with neurocognitive dysfunction are significantly lower ¹⁶.

Given the above, it is concluded that the elderly with neurocognitive disorder lose their functional capacity, in addition to presenting cognitive and emotional disorders and loss of their quality of life and that this is still a question of many studies that need to be answered. Thus, this systematic review aimed to analyze the effects of applying art therapy based on visual creative processes on cognitive, emotional, and quality of life aspects in elderly people with neurocognitive disorders.

This is a systematic review, including therapeutic intervention studies, carried out between February and August 2021, covering art therapy based on the execution of visual artistic creative processes to address neurocognitive disorders in elderly patients.

Research strategies

The research was started in 6 different base data: CAPES, PUBMED, Scielo, Lilacs/Bireme and PEDro. It was only always used key-words created by the DeCs, but connecting all of them with boleans operators. The platform is being described in the Table 1.

Table 1
Descriptors used in the databases and the number of articles found in each database.

Data analysis

The process of analyzing the articles was divided into three phases: the first phase would be related to the inclusion and exclusion of articles based on the research inclusion and exclusion criteria; the second phase was the reading of titles and abstracts of each work, and the third and last phase was the full reading of the articles, as shown in Figure 1.

Figure 1
Flowchart of identified and selected studies based on database, criteria, and processes on research.

The articles were evaluated using the PEDro Scale, an instrument used to assess therapeutic intervention trials, with a high rate of reliability and scientific feasibility in therapeutic intervention studies. The articles that fit this scale had quality levels measured as follows: “low,” if they scored 0–3; “average,” if they scored 4–5; and “high,” if they scored 6–10.

According to the vast majority of studies collected for this research, the inclusion of art therapy in health treatments brought numerous benefits, such as improvements in motor coordination, perception, well-being, memory and depressive symptoms. The most used activities are drawing and painting ³⁴. However, artistic production can be made possible through materials and techniques that involve the use of colored pencils, crayons, gouache paints and, in some cases, the use of modeling clay, plaster and sculptures, such as was found in the articles of this review ³⁵.

The article by Lopes et al. suggests that the art-therapeutic strategies brought improvement in the MMSE indexes and in the King's Figure Test in its intervention group. However, the results of this work also make it possible to understand that this intervention adds up in another way to issues of the individual's experience, emphasizing the chance that the elderly have to express their particularities through expression and creativity. Toscano et al., along the same lines, emphasizes in his study that the assessment of these variables should not disregard the patient's personality characteristics, such as the presence of anxiety, emotions, fears and insecurities. Thus, the multidisciplinary integration behind the application of this intervention is of paramount importance, in order to expand the interpretation of the data, through discussions between physicians, psychologists, occupational therapists, physiotherapists, art professionals, etc. Allied to this, the presence of the word “expression” is remarkable, since it is through its means that human beings come to better understand and understand the other. The conclusion obtained by Toscano takes into account the appearance of depression, loneliness and sadness more frequently in the elderly, who end up suffering from anxiety, stress and nervousness when diagnosed with Neurocognitive Disorder. These emotional stress events complicate the patient's recovery process, prolonging their suffering and accentuating their neuropsychiatric disorders.36

The studies by Zhao and Hattori et al. mention that the strategies based on visual creative processes brought superior results in their evaluation instruments in relation to traditional cognitive rehabilitation, advocating the incorporation of activities based on narration and imagination in traditional interventions. Hattori also affirms that there was no disparity between the results after applying an intervention with painting or drawing, and that the strategy that receives the most satisfaction from patients should be preferred.

Masika et. Al found better answers regarding the quality of life of the elderly in the Geriatric Depression Scale. Patients in this study reported improvement in the feeling of empowerment and memory, psychosocial and cognitive health, sleep pattern and depressive mood, although they did not have better results compared to the control group in the MOCA. By the way, these are typical manifestations of the neurocognitive picture ³⁵. The target audience of this article was elderly people with a low level of education, including illiterate people, who had their first contact with writing, decoding and production of symbols or images with this study. Thus, the psycho-emotional response found in this audience is in line with what has been previously described in other works in the literature.

The study by Mahendran et al., on the other hand, points out that the artetherapeutic strategy was able to reverse the cellular scenario of inflammation around the telomeres, which is associated with reduced cognitive performance and systemic aging in general. However, there were no statistically significant differences between the groups that received the intervention, indicating the need for new studies with larger populations to be carried out to consolidate new results. It is noteworthy that no adverse effects were found in this and other studies associated with the intervention.

Tietyen et al., on the other hand, looked to the visual arts for new ways of learning to improve cognition, coordination, and emotional state, with the aim of re-socializing them. Interventions based on decoration, collage, painting, ceramics, photography, impression marks and assembly improved communication, fine motor skills, coordination and oculomotor skills, giving them independence in Activities of Daily Living (ADL). Likewise, Savazzi applied activities such as drawing, painting and creative stimulation through the audiovisual system in elderly people diagnosed with Alzheimer's Disease. Using the QoL-AD, NPI and ADAS-cog in this group, the group that received intervention in the disease achieved significant improvements in language, communication and cognitive function. The authors also mention the high adherence that the treatment had by the patients, again emphasizing the satisfaction and trust that people had in the treatment that was proposed to them.

Going against what was mentioned in other studies, Johnson et al. did not observe any statistically significant effect associated with the artetherapeutic intervention in an intervention group, comparing it with the control group, populated by patients on the waiting list. The instruments used to measure the variables were: MOCA and the Backward Digit Span, the same ones used in other works covered by this review. The authors say it is extremely unlikely that quantifiable cognitive benefits will occur with art training in a population with Neurocognitive Disorder, stating that they are confident in the hypothesis that the measures selected by the group are not the cause of the null results. However, researchers still elucidate the importance of promoting the artistic potential of these patients.

Thus, it is concluded that further efforts with greater methodological rigor are still needed to consolidate, in fact, the cognitive effects of the art-therapeutic approach in the post-intervention, given the greater instability of studies in the collection of this item. Furthermore, art therapy based on visual creative processes is shown in the observed data as a reliable proposal for improving the quality of life and self-knowledge of those who apply it.