Effects of indoor gardening on sleep, agitation, and cognition in dementia patients—a pilot study

A pilot study was performed to examine the efficacy of indoor gardening on sleep, agitation and cognition of dementia patients.Twenty-three institutionalized dementia patients who had sleep disturbance and/or agitation participated in a 5-week study protocol of 1 week of baseline and 4 weeks of treatment. The study design was a one group repeated measures study. For the first and fifth week of the study period, sleep patterns, agitation, and cognition were evaluated using a sleep diary, Modified Cohen-Mansfield Agitation Inventory and revised Hasegawa Dementia Scale respectively.Significant improvement in wake after sleep onset, nap, nocturnal sleep time, and nocturnal sleep efficiency was identified. On the contrary sleep onset time, wake-up time, total sleep time did not change after indoor gardening. Agitation and cognition score was significantly improved.Indoor gardening was found to be effective for sleep, agitation, and cognition of dementia patients. Randomized controlled studies of larger sample size are needed to confirm treatment effect.