Effects of reminiscence and life review on late-life depression: a meta-analysis

Aim: To assess the effectiveness of reminiscence and life review on late-life depression across different target groups and treatment modalities.

Method: Twenty controlled outcome studies were retrieved from Psychlit, Medline and Dissertation Abstracts. For each study a standardised effect size, d, was calculated and a random-effects meta-analysis was conducted.

Results: An overall effect size of 0.84 (95% Confidence Intervals (CI)=0.31-1.37) was found, indicating a statistically and clinically significant effect of reminiscence and life review on depressive symptomatology in elderly people. This effect is comparable to the effects commonly found for pharmacotherapy and psychological treatments. The effect was larger in subjects with elevated depressive symptomatology (d=1.23) as compared to other subjects (d=0.37). Other characteristics of the subjects or interventions were not found to be related to increased or decreased effect sizes.

Discussion: Reminiscence and life review are potentially effective treatments for depressive symptoms in the elderly and may thus offer a valuable alternative to psychotherapy or pharmacotherapy. Especially in non-institutionalised elderly people-who often have untreated depression-it may prove to be an effective, safe and acceptable form of treatment. Randomized trials with sufficient statistical power are necessary to confirm the results of this study.