The Effect of Sensory Room Intervention on Perceptual-Cognitive

Objective: individuals with schizophrenia show perceptual-cognitive abnormalities. moreover, depressionand anxiety are integral components of the disease most of the times. psychiatric patients under institutionalcare experience lack of control and choice-making in their daily lives. sensory room is an environment inwhich individuals can choose, control and explore the stimuli around them. so, they can organize theirresponses to their environment and restore and develop their skills, interacting through it.method: 48 people met the study’s inclusion criteria. they were evaluated with lowensteinoccupational therapy cognitive assessment, mini mental state examination, and positive and negativesyndrome scale. then they were randomly and equally assigned to intervention and comparison groups.the intervention group received sensory room intervention and the comparison group had its traditionaltherapies. after 32 treatment sessions, 14 participants in the intervention group and 7 participants in thecomparison group were excluded from the study and the tests were repeated for the remaining ones.results: our findings did not show a significant effect of sensory room intervention on perceptualcognitiveperformance and psychiatric status of people with schizophrenia (p > 0.05). in the remindingdomain, however, results indicated maintenance of the skill in the intervention group (p > 0.05), and itsexacerbation in the comparison group (p < 0.05).conclusions: no significant change in perceptual-cognitive performance and psychiatric status ofindividuals with schizophrenia was found during the 3 month period of sensory room intervention, exceptfor reminding which did not change significantly in the intervention group, but regressed in thecomparison group after the intervention period.