Influences of Horticultural Therapy and Functional Recovery Training at a Day-Care Center for the Elderly and Text Mining of Care Records by AI

Background: In Japan, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, various behavioral restrictions were implemented from March 2020, resulting in an increased number of elderly people with reduced participation in care and rehabilitation. As a result, the decline in motor and cognitive functions became more pronounced. Purpose: The study examined how activities combining passive horticultural therapy, which is always introduced, with active functional recovery training, which is used in the functional recovery training of patients with hemiplegia, influence the behavior of elder people using the facility. Methods: 36 elder people with care need 1 or 2 who regularly used the day-care facilities after the pandemic ended and who agreed to participate in the study was included. The assessment data were every three months from December 2021 to December 2023 after the COVID-19 pandemic, the MMSE and Moca-J, TMIG-Index, and GDS15. AI-based text mining was used to compare changes in visit reports before and after the introduction of the Posture Chart and Red Code, and the relationship between the language used. Results: The results of MMSE and Moca-J were both significantly higher in Group B and C than in Group A. TIMG assessment, was significantly higher in Group B and C than in Group A, and Group C was significantly higher than Group B. The GDS, an assessment of depression in old age, tended to be significantly higher in Group A than in Groups B and C. In the “Co-Occurrence Network Analysis” shown after the introduction of the latest functional recovery training equipment such as the Red Cord, its results showed a high association between the words Bathing and CARE and words such as POSTURE, Red-Code, and AI, App, which are used in functional training and rehabilitation, and their analysis. Conclusion: At day-care facilities specializing in functional recovery training and rehabilitation, a combination of horticultural therapy and the latest functional training equipment found to help maintain the physical and mental health of elderly people certified as requiring nursing care. Since this is a short-term study following behavioral restrictions, long-term research should continue to study the effects of adding functional training, handled by rehabilitation professionals, to horticultural therapy.

Improvement in social skills in patients with schizophrenia following 6 months of day-care treatment

Using role-playing tests simulating real-life situations, we investigated improvement in the social skills, especially information processing, of patients with schizophrenia in response to day-care in psychiatry and social skills training. From 20 pair-matched schizophrenia patients, 10 were assigned to a day-care/SST group and 10 to a control group undergoing usual treatment. After 6 months, sending and receiving skills were assessed by means of role-playing tests, psychiatric symptoms, social function, and cognitive function. The day-care/SST group showed a significant improvement and a large effect size in sending skills. Receiving skills also improved, showing a medium effect size, but the difference from the control group was not statistically significant. No statistically significant changes were observed in the other measures. That no changes occurred in social function, psychiatric symptoms, or cognitive function leads to two conclusions: 1) cognition targeted, specialized training and comprehension of cognitive remediation, psychiatric rehabilitation, and social skill development are necessary for improvement in other domains, especially symptoms and social functions;and 2) improvement resulting from day-care in psychiatry and SST alone is limited. In addition, further investigations over a longer observation period and a greater sample size are needed.