Rusted 2006.

Methods	Randomised controlled trial (parallel, individual) The study was completed in 2002
Participants	45 people with a formal diagnosis of dementia (diagnosed by consultant psychogeriatrician) Attendance at day care or residential facility Data reported for 21 participants
Interventions	Art therapy (experimental) group Activity (control) group Treatment is weekly 1‐hour sessions for 40 weeks
Outcomes	Cognition: Cognitive impairment (MMSE), Short term memory (RBMT), Auditory and visual attention (TEA), Verbal fluency (BFT) Affect and emotional well‐being: depressive symptomatology (CSDD) All listed primary outcomes: cognition, affect and emotional well‐being, social functioning and behaviour: self‐care functioning, disorientated behaviour, depressed/anxious mood, irritable behaviour, sociability and withdrawn behaviour (MOSES)
Notes	Study funding sources: PPP (Health) Foundation
Risk of bias
Bias	Authors' judgement	Support for judgement
Random sequence generation (selection bias)	Unclear risk	Quote: "Participants were randomly assigned... based on participants' ID numbers being drawn by chance" (p521; pp2)
Allocation concealment (selection bias)	Unclear risk	Incompletely defined or insufficient information provided by the study authors
Blinding of participants and personnel (performance bias) All outcomes	High risk	Not reported and the intervention in question is difficult to blind participants and personnel from
Blinding of outcome assessment (detection bias) All outcomes	Unclear risk	Not reported
Incomplete outcome data (attrition bias) All outcomes	High risk	High dropout rate is not accounted for in the analysis (24 out of 45 recruited participants did not complete the study). Considering that the sample sizes are small, this high attrition rate (53.3%) impacts on the reliability of this study's results.
Other bias	High risk	The intervention and control groups were not comparable at baseline ‐ the art therapy group had a higher mean depression score (P < 0.01) than the control group.

Benton Fluency Task (BFT); Zarit Caregiver Burden Interview (CBI); Cornell Scale for Depression in Dementia (CSDD); Geriatric Depression Scale (GDS); Mini‐Mental State Examination (MMSE); Multi Observational Scale for the Elderly (MOSES); Rivermead Behavioural Memory Test (RBMT); Tests of Everyday Attention (TEA); Wechsler Memory Scale‐Revised (WMS‐R)