Art Therapy Approaches in Alzheimer's Disease: A Systematic Review

Art therapy (AT) has been adopted in recent years as a possible non-pharmacological approach in older persons living with Alzheimer's disease (AD) to improve both cognitive and behavioral and psychological symptoms that accompany the disease. Our main aim was to conduct a systematic review of the methodological and practical effectiveness of different approaches using AT in older people living with AD. The systematic analysis of the studies finally selected (n = 12) suggests that the measures applied to evaluate the effectiveness of AT may not always be the most appropriate to assess the impact of this approach in this type of population, in many cases not being sufficiently sensitive to adequately capture all the significant changes produced by the intervention. Neurologically informed AT, as well as the use of biomarkers, could better identify and capture intervention-induced changes, being a step toward evidence-based practice in the application of this type of approach.