A systematic review of play therapy interventions with older adults

There is a dearth of research that enacts play therapy as a mechanism to support positive outcomes for older adult clients. Furthermore, there are no systematic reviews that identify interventions or programming implemented with older adult clients. This is the first study to conduct such a review following PRISMA guidelines, where N = 12 articles were included for review, to learn how play therapy practices were enacted with older adult clients and what kind of outcomes were yielded. Our findings specifically review 1) target population, which refers to the label used to refer to individuals receiving play therapy, (2) sample sizes, (3) where were the services received, (4) whether play therapy facilitators held an RPT credential, (5) whether implemented practices were explicitly called "play therapy", (6) differentiating whether the intervention as play therapy, play-based activity, or recreational activity, (7) purpose or goal of treatment (8) practices conducted within the study, (9) data used to depict of implemented practices, (10) study outcomes. Findings indicate that play therapy is a program worth implementing with older adult clients as positive noted outcomes included how programming yielded improved cognitive and physical agility, decreased loneliness, improved memory as indicated by improved ability to recall stories from one's life, and improved self-efficacy.