The purpose of this study lies in carrying out group art therapy through reminiscence for the demented
old people and analysing their cognitive function, depression to see the effect of the therapy. This study
was carried out in the way of randomly allocating 20 demented old people, 10 for test group, 10 for
control group who had been in the short term care center in K-gu, S-city. The group art therapy through
reminiscence was conducted 60 minutes per time twice a week, 8 weeks, total 16 times for the test group.
First, Mini-Mental State Examination(MMSE-K) was conducted for pre. post program cognitive function, and
Geriatric Depression Scale in Korea; GDS-K was conducted for depression for the verification of the
program effect. The following are the results of the study. First, the orientation, memory registry(memory
recalling) attention, language ability of the test group that went through reminiscence used group art
therapy among sub region of cognitive function increased statistically compared with the control group.
Second, the loss of interest, feeling of unhappiness, suspense, social withdrawal, depressive mood of the test
group that went through reminiscence used group art therapy among sub region of depression statistically
reduced compared with the control group. Third, the projection image test in LMT appeared to be positive.
The number of color use also increased along with their drawing posture from passive to positive posture.
The integrated results of the study showed that the group art therapy using reminiscence was very useful
for the change in cognitive function and depression of the demented old people.