[Neuropsychological therapy in dementia patients: what is reasonable?]

The aging of the population leads to increasing incidence rates of dementia. Besides pharmacotherapy, non-pharmacological interventions are becoming more and more recognised. Although the data can be regarded as insufficient, many studies indicate that neuropsychological therapy can lead to an improvement of cognitive and non-cognitive symptoms in patients with dementia and mild cognitive impairment, or even decelerate the course of decline. Regulating guidelines of the local health insurance companies do not yet include this type of intervention. However, they are recommended in the recently published German guidelines for the diagnosis and treatment of dementia. Scientific efforts for the evaluation of specific training programmes can be expected; implementation of the results into clinical practice is desirable.