Using Reminiscence Therapy To Help Dementia Patients

For those living with dementia, the world can feel unfamiliar and confusing. But what if we could bring comfort and joy by reconnecting them with their past? Here, Blazer, how cool is this room? So fun. Okay, there's a reason I'm in an old school room to record today's video. It's because we are going to be talking about simple, easy, creative ways you can bring out your loved ones past to help connect with them now in the present. So we know that in dementia, many times, somebody's longer term memories, memories from their earlier years, are the last to go. They remember those older memories more than more recent memories. That's why we sometimes hear about people with dementia forgetting who their spouse is, who their family members are, people thinking they forgot them, when in the majority of cases, it's just that in their memory, the person they remember looks way different. Their spouse, the memory of their spouse is from 30, 40, 50 years ago, not how their spouse looks now. So it can be really confusing for the person with dementia when they're looking at somebody who's saying, hey, I'm your spouse, or I'm your family member, and that's not who they think they've married because they are living in a different time. So let's talk about how we're going to bring out these memories, and not even so much their memory. It's not even about getting them to remember. It's more about connecting them to a time in their past where they felt more safe, more secure, and it's associated with better feelings. This is something called reminiscence therapy, and connecting with things from their past or environments from their past, like this home, has been shown to have positive impact on people with dementia. And when we think about it, it makes intuitive sense. So if you're somebody who's wanting to bring comfort to your loved one with dementia during moments they feel in distress, or ideally you want to prevent or reduce how often they feel in distress, connecting them to memories of their past, ideally where they think they are in their own memory, is a way to help make this happen. A 2018 study from the Cochran Dementia and Cognitive Improvement Group did a full analysis on reminiscence therapy, and if it's actually beneficial for people with dementia. And although the effect size was small in most studies, what they did find is that reminiscence therapy has the ability to improve quality of life, improve communication, and improve mood for people living with dementia using reminiscence therapy. And here are five simple easy ways you can start bringing this into your life right now, and nope, you don't even have to change your whole apartment to look like this. And even though the effect size was small, meaning there was some improvement, but it wasn't like a huge improvement compared to people who didn't receive reminiscence therapy, this can be something quite fun for you. You might enjoy some of the activities I'm about to share, and it's just a beautiful way to do something different and have a different experience with your loved one rather than staying in the same old routine. All right, here we go. Five fun and creative ways to bring reminiscence therapy into your life and help bring out some of those better feelings from their past. We start right now. Number three and five are my personal favorites. Looking through old school photo albums can be a beautiful way to connect them to their past using older photos from them when they were younger and people they would have interacted with and how their family members looked when they were younger. You can even take a twist on this activity by creating a photo album with them together using images of the past, whether it's photos or even if it's more like a scrapbooking looking at how things look from the past, the way the famous actors and actresses were from the past and putting them in a photo album like this together. All right, number two. Have you ever seen those videos online where somebody with dementia, severe dementia, where they can they don't even remember their spouse, all of a sudden a song from their past comes on and they remember every single word. Even you, you might have this experience as well where right now if I asked you to remember the words to some song you would have no idea, but the minute the background music comes on you can start singing every single word. Music and dance can be a powerful connector to the past. For many with dementia, especially those in the later stages, music can trigger memories and emotions from the past providing a sense of familiarity and comfort. Have you ever seen those videos of people with dementia who have severe memory impairment and then a song from their past comes on and somehow they're able to sing every word? It's amazing. Music has the ability to reach parts of the brain that are last impacted by the disease. So it makes a beautiful effective form of reminiscence therapy. You can easily find music from your loved one's childhood by going to YouTube, searching the top songs in whatever year you want to search. You can even create your own playlist in YouTube and save all of those videos in one place. Oh and it's totally free. My dad happens to have a ton of records so you could also take records and play those. Idea number three is to find items from their past and bring them in the present. Now I walked the aisle of Goodwill to see what I could find. I found this super cool Elvis poster booklet that's just big pictures of Elvis, his family, a few words here and there. This was $3.29. I found this really cool 1989 cake decorating for people who might have been interested in baking or looking at cakes. The International Encyclopedia of Quotations, $3.29 and you don't have to stick to books or magazines. Maybe there are plates, cups, glasses, things that they would have been using in the past and you can bring them now. This glass set was $1.49 together for the both of them and you might have some of the stuff laying around maybe in your garage, in your shed. It's just a simple easy way to start introducing this type of thing into their environment. If you don't want to go shopping or look around for some of these things, you can create your own kind of scrapbook with images of the past or even saving them on your iPad or phone. Idea number four, create a corner or part of the house with the older elements from their childhood, from their past. This can help induce a feeling of familiarity and comfort so it doesn't have to be a full room but maybe it's a corner of the room. Number five, this is one of my favorites, is to find an old recipe from the past and cook it together. This could be one of their favorite recipes from childhood or a traditional recipe that was popular during that time frame. So think about what were some of those favorite dishes? What would have been a typical type of dinner when they were growing up? Create that together and if they're not able to fully participate in the cooking process, that's okay. Maybe they can be the taste tester. Maybe they can supervise. Maybe they can be in the room while you're cooking. Or at the very least, they can enjoy viewing the final product and eating the final product. When I was preparing for this video, I started searching online popular recipes of the 50s and I was quite shocked. I hadn't heard or seen any of those foods before and I would imagine that when I am in my 80s, some of the dishes and foods I would have now won't be as popular then. And you know, there were lots of casseroles. There was like a jello pie, some chipped meat kind of thing. Like it was really fun to just research and the things looked so different and this would be like an easy, fun, different thing for you guys to not only have to eat, but to do together. By embracing their past, we're not only creating moments of joy and connection, but we're also, according to research, improving the chances of improved mood, quality of life, and communication simply by engaging in this reminiscence therapy. Now, which one of the five are you considering doing with your loved one? I would love to know. Leave it in a comment below. Okay Careblazer, real quick before you hang up, before you leave, there's a red subscribe button on your screen. It's really important for two reasons. When you click the red subscribe button, which by the way, is 100% free. Number one, it communicates to YouTube that people like you find videos like this helpful and so YouTube will go out and they will find a caregiver right now somewhere in the world searching for dementia support and information and they will put my videos in front of them. So you're literally helping other people looking for help find videos like this. Number two, I would love it so much to start inviting some of the researchers, scientists, and cutting-edge people in the field of dementia. I would love to bring them onto this channel and to interview them. Perhaps the people in the study that I referenced today and for them to come on and share what they are learning with all of us and in order for me to attract high quality caliber talented scientists and for them to take the time out of their day to come and share with us, I have to show them that this channel is actually a channel people are interested and people are watching. So I really do appreciate you for doing that. For all of you who have been subscribed forever, I love you. Thank you so much and for all of you who aren't yet, I really do appreciate you considering it. Again, it's totally free to click. That's all I have Careblazer. What do we think? We're gonna hang out here for a little bit. Kind of soak in the past. Also, Nico gets a belly rub for every person who subscribes from this video. So if you haven't already, click the red subscribe button. It's totally free and Nico says thank you very much.