Study Review Finds Massage Therapy In Older People Promotes Well-Being, Care In Residential Care Settings
The full abstract is titled Massage, a complementary therapy effectively promoting the health and well-being of older people in residential care settings: a review of the literature
This study was a review of fourteen studies of massage therapy provided to elderly residents in residential care settings. Presumably, this means primarily nursing homes, but there are many other residential type care settings that elderly patients can be involved with where these results can also be applied.
For example, some older adults live in small communities where income is a factor, and they are open only to individuals with a certain income threshold. There are also assisted living facilities, which are kind of like nursing homes, but the patients tend to be more self-sufficient. Whereas many patients in nursing homes require assistance to bathe and dress, those in assisted living facilities just get certain essentials taken care of. For example, their rooms might be cleaned for them, their bathrooms would be cleaned and maintained, their laundry would be washed and folded for them, and their meals would be prepared. But they are able to take care of some of their needs on their own. Sometimes these two types of facilities are co-located, such as many places in New Jersey.
Often senior living communities are little separate homes, and they are more like little condominiums. People living in such communities are very self-sufficient in terms of self-care, but these types of living arrangements offer many benefits to their residents. For example, one of the many issues that elderly people face is loneliness and depression. In most American families, the children move away from home at a certain point to start their own family in their own home.
The elderly parent left behind will sometimes move into a community or into a facility, and all of these places have central locations where the residents currently gather. These places could also be where they could come to be provided with massage therapy. According to the review paper, many residential care facilities can benefit from adding massage therapy for their residents. Geriatric massage, including on patients with health conditions such as arthritis, pain, or sleep issues, can be a very good non-pharmacological therapy for these conditions. Some of the benefits can last for days or longer, and many improvements were reported.
Patients receiving this care reported better sleep, improved mood, and less pain. They also experienced positive psychosocial benefits from receiving the massage therapy. Other studies have shown benefits to elderly patients experiencing dementia and Alzheimer’s disease, including improved mood and less stress and aggression. This can be especially important for in-patients receiving care in residential facilities, as they can endanger the staff members and medical personnel.
People should not have to worry about aggressive patients when they come in to work, but this can sometimes be the case. In normal cases, restraints or medications would have to be used, but in the studies reviewed, massage therapy was able to reduce the frequency of these issues.
Adding massage for the elderly as a supplement to other health care programs and activities at residential care facilities is likely to help improve the morale of the patients by improving their mood, pain status, and psychosocial health. Overall perceptions of wellness were improved by providing massage therapy to the elderly patients receiving care. Such intervention can improve the overall well-being of patients in such facilities, causing them to report experiencing a better quality of life.
Considering the prevalence in this population of age-related health conditions, most of which increase overall body pain, this can be very important. The aging population is already experiencing growth, and this is expected to continue in the coming years as more people live longer, healthier lives. As this aging population increases, it will become more necessary to provide care for them, including growing numbers of nursing homes, assisted living facilities, and senior communities. Adding geriatric massage to these institutions can only benefit the patients, as there are no side effects, but it can reduce the need for medications and other interventions. This can cause their perception of their lives to improve, and their levels of depression to decrease.
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