Cognitive Stimulation Therapy for Dementia: A Two-Armed Pragmatic Trial

Completed · Not applicable

Conditions studied: Dementia, Cognitive Impairment, Mild, Dementia, Vascular, Dementia, Mixed, Dementia With Lewy Bodies, Dementia Frontal, Dementia Moderate, Dementia of Alzheimer Type, Dementia, Mild

In brief

Cognitive Stimulation Therapy (CST) is an evidence-based non-pharmacological group therapy shown to benefit people with mild to moderate dementia. Despite increasing availability of CST worldwide, access remains limited in the United States. This pilot pragmatic trial will embed CST referral into the standard care protocol of health care settings that serve people living with dementia in the state of Connecticut, and evaluate online delivery of CST known as virtual CST (V-CST), and assess the acceptability of V-CST to people living with dementia. The study design is a two-armed randomized embedded pragmatic clinical trial (ePCT). The trial aims to determine if cognitive decline is experienced less commonly among V-CST participants than control group members based on three widely used measures of cognition, the Montreal Cognitive Assessment (MoCA), St. Louis University Memory Screen (SLUMS), and Mini Mental State Exam (MMSE). The study population will be persons with mild to moderate dementia identified by clinicians in standard care. From this population, subject participants will be randomized to intervention and control groups. Patients randomly assigned to the intervention group will be referred by their clinical providers to participate in V-CST, and those who accept the referral will participate in the intervention.

Key facts

Study ID

NCT05860127

Run by

University of Massachusetts, Amherst

People needed

133

Starts

2023-04-10

Expected to finish

2025-06-12

Last updated by the study team

2026-03-23

Who can join

Age: 18 and older. Sex: any. Healthy volunteers: not accepted.

You may qualify if…

• Diagnosis of Mild Cognitive Impairment or Mild to Moderate Dementia
• MoCA score of 10 to 26 OR SLUMS score of 10 to 26 OR MMSE score between 13 and 24 recorded as present < 24 months before the record review
• English-speaking
• Visit scheduled to include cognitive screening 6 to 12 months after record review.

You may not qualify if…

• Auditory or visual impairment, combative behaviors, or other clinician-assessed condition that would interfere with group treatment
• No access to online meeting platform
• Patient has specified to HCS not to engage patient in research or to use patient data in research
• Patient has previously participated in V-CST
• Physician determines a caregiver is needed to support V-CST participation, but no caregiver available to assist with technology.

Where it is running

• UConn Center on Aging — Farmington, Connecticut, United States
• Yale Memory Clinic — New Haven, Connecticut, United States

Full record on ClinicalTrials.gov

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