Verbal responses, depressive symptoms, reminiscence functions and cognitive emotion regulation in older women receiving individual reminiscence therapy

Aims and objectives To examine the effectiveness of individual reminiscence therapy in community‐dwelling older women with depressive symptoms and to explore the characteristics of participants’ verbalisation in the process. Background Previous studies have found reminiscence was related to depression and anxiety. Although reminiscence therapy is widely used to reduce depression, little is known about how it works, and the content of verbalisations might provide one explanation. Design The study employed a one‐group pretest–post‐test design. Methods Twenty‐seven participants underwent 6‐week interventions of individual reminiscence therapy at home that were conducted by one nurse and induced through seeing old photographs. The Geriatric Depression Scale, Zung Self‐rating Anxiety Scale, Reminiscence Functions Scale and Cognitive Emotion Regulation Questionnaire were used to measure the emotional states, reminiscence functions and cognitive emotion regulation strategies. Participants’ verbalisations were categorised using the Client Behavior System. Results Reminiscence therapy relieved depression and anxiety. Both the reminiscence function and cognitive emotion regulation became more favourable after interventions. Furthermore, higher frequencies of recounting, cognitive‐behavioural exploration and affective exploration were noted in the process. Participants with more severe depressive symptoms tended to display a higher frequency of affective exploration. The reduction in depression, self‐negative reminiscence and negative‐focused emotion regulation were respectively associated with verbalisations. Conclusions Individual reminiscence therapy might relieve negative emotion and improve reminiscence function and cognitive emotion regulation. The participants’ verbalisation is worthy of our attention, due to its correlation with the severity of depression and its mitigating effects on the depression, anxiety, self‐negative reminiscence and negative‐focused regulation in older women. The results contribute to our understanding of the therapeutic procedure and suggest a need for more research on the therapeutic processes. Relevance to clinical practice Study on processes could help training novice clinical interveners so that reminiscence therapy can work better on emotional disorders in clinical practice.