"Applied Multi-Sensory Stimulation (AMSS) designs to examine therapeutic benefits based on psychotherapy foundation with sensory arousals – both promising emotional and marked behavioral rehabilitation changes to populations with severe Dementia and Alzheimer’s."
Effectiveness of AMSS Therapy with adults with complex disabilities- Dementia and Alzheimer’s disease
Until now, there has been limited evidence for the effectiveness of multi-sensory stimulation (van Weert, 2004). Moreover, in the past decade, many art-psychotherapy intervention studies lacked an investigation of the extent to which the intervention was implemented as intended, which in certain cases makes outcome measures difficult to validate due to lack of solid scientific evidence. However, it is important to note that improvements in the quality of life in patients constitutes progress and are more than just scientific evidence. The measures of quality of life and satisfaction with therapies, as outlined by William et al. (1978), tend to reflect the subjective experience of the patients as a result of participating in psychosocial rehabilitation where they achieved behavioral rehabilitation and positive emotional outcome. Quality of life measures related to subjective well-being are items such as how well one slept at night or how good a meal was.
The AMSS study had two primary objectives. The first objective was to assess the evidence for emotional and behavioral improvements due to the AMSS approach as a tailored complementary therapy for the resources currently available for treating the severely demented population. The second objective was to present the findings of this study such that they can be utilized in future research. Such future research will have the goal to develop educational concepts for the future practice of clinical art-psychotherapy with the dementia population. Moreover, future research utilizing the AMSS approach will focus on proposing clinical art-psychotherapy guidelines for the dementia and Alzheimer’s disease patient in order to aid other therapists and practitioners’ in similar clinical settings to improve patients’ quality of life and well-being.
