Effect of Non Pharmacological Intervention on Sleep Quality Improvement of Institutionalized Elders

The prevalence of sleep problem in adulthood increases with age. While not all sleep changes are non pathological in later life, severe disturbances may lead to depression, cognitive impairments, deterioration of quality of life. The most common treatment for insomnia is pharmacological. Physical exercise may promote relaxation and raise core body temperature in ways that are beneficial to initiating and maintaining sleep. Objectives were to assess the quality of sleep before and after introduction of non pharmacological intervention, controlled exercises among the elders and also to find out the association between the qualities of sleep with selected demographic variables. A pre-experimental, one group pre test post test design was used. The sample consisting of 30 elders were selected by purposive sampling. Tools used were baseline Primary insomnia screening tool, Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index (PSQI) for quality of sleep, Richards-Campbell sleep questionnaire for quality of sleep. Sleep onset latency improved slightly for both men and women. Total sleep duration, sleep onset latency, sleep efficiency and scores on a scale of global sleep quality and Richards-Campbell sleep questionnaire showed significant improvement. Negative result showed in the improvement of sleep quality after 30days and positive only in primary insomnia.