A new comprehensive educational group program for older adults with cognitive complaints: Background, content, and process evaluation

Abstract

This paper presents a comprehensive group intervention for older adults with cognitive complaints. It offers psycho-education about cognitive aging and contextual factors, focuses on skills and compensatory behaviour, and incorporates group discussion. The intervention reduced negative emotional reactions towards cognitive functioning in a controlled study in healthy women aged 60 to 75 years. Its background and content are described in detail to enable replication and large-scale implementation. Therefore, a process evaluation was carried out. The results support participants’ appreciation and point to better self-evaluations after intervention. This intervention may offer a valuable contribution to public health care for older adults.