The Effectiveness of Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy on Sleep and Memory State in the Elderly

Memory and sleep disorders are among the topics that create many problems for the elderly, and threat their physical and mental health. So this study was done with aim to investigate the effectiveness of cognitive-behavior therapy on elderly memory and sleeping. This was a quasi-experimental study and used pretest- posttest and follow-up with control group. The population of this study consisted of all elderly whit Parkinson’s disease that referred to research center of neurology and Parkinson’s clinic of Dr.shahidi in Tehran. The sample size of 40 patients with Parkinson were selected by available sampling and randomly were assigned to experimental and control groups. The experimental group received elderly cognitive-behavior therapy for 10 sessions, one session each week. To collect data, the scale of Peterzburgs (1989) sleep quality and daily (1983) memory questionnaire were used. Variance analysis whit repeated measures was used to analyze data statistically. The results of variance analysis whit repeated measures showed that cognitive- behavioral therapy affect the sleep disorders of elderlies (p<0.05). The results of follow up LSD tests showed that there is a significant difference between post- test and follow up in sleep disorders and memory. So it is recommended to psychologists who work in the field of elderly use the cognitive- behavior therapy to improve the sleep quality and memory of elderly.