Prevalence of Mild Cognitive Impairment and Effect of a Cognitive Training Program in the Elderly Living in a Community of Chantaburi Province

Abstract

The objective of this study was to find out the prevalence of the mild cognitive impairment (MCI)
in the elderly living in a community at Chantaburi Province in order to compare the cognitive function in
the elderly with the MCI in the experimental group before and after receiving the cognitive training program,
and to compare the cognitive function in the elderly with the MCI between the experimental group
receiving the cognitive training program and the control group receiving the normal health care after the
end of the experiment. This study was a quasi-experimental research design conducted in 856 people
aged over 60 years, both male and female, who lived in Kai Nean Wong Municipality, Muang District,
Chantaburi Province where 273 people were selected as the samples by the simple random sampling
method. The selected people were screened by qualification criteria to get 46 samples who were divided
into 23 persons for the experimental group and the other 23 persons for the control group. The researcher
visited the research site for interviewing, and use the MoCA and MoCA-B and t-test statistic for a
period of 1 year and 6 months. The result showed that most elderly or 167 persons (61.2%) had MCI.
The elderly who received the cognitive training program got higher cognitive function scores while the
elderly group who received the cognitive training program got significanly higher means scores than the
other group receiving the normal health care (p<0.05). Therefore, the screening of MCI at the beginning
stage is quite important. Public health personnel’s ability to screen this status before transferring will be
beneficial to the elderly, family, and community. It was also found that if the elderly with MCI practiced
the cognitive training program by themselves at home based on the public health official’s advice, their
cognitive function will be eventually improved.