Social prescribing ‘beats drugs’ for depression in dementia
A range of interventions, including exercise and animal therapy, can help those with mild depressive symptoms, researchers say
Non-drug therapies appear to be as good as, if not better than, medication for reducing depressive symptoms in patients with dementia, a systematic review suggests.
The finding is timely, the researchers say, with evidence increasing for a link between antiÂdepressant use in patients with dementia and harms from falls, including fracture.
The team, led by the University of Toronto in Canada, analysed data from 256 studies involving a total of 28,000 patients in the first major systematic review to compare drug and non-drug approaches.
Data indicated that non-drug interventions alone or in combination with medication were the best interventions for those patients with depressive symptoms who did not have major depressive disorder.
