Seniors

marybourg

(12,633 posts) Sun Dec 31, 2017, 02:44 PM Dec 2017

A German nursing home tries a novel form of dementia therapy.

Re-creating a vanished era for its patients.

An interesting article which raises as many questions as it answers.

“People with dementia often still have a good long-term memory, whereas their short-term memory does not really work anymore. They may not remember relatives and family so well, but they can remember very well certain details from decades ago,” said Ursula Beer, a volunteer at the nursing home.

The Alexa nursing home where Bauer and Noack. . . live is trying to trigger such memories by re-creating settings from the communist era as a form of therapy. While other nursing homes are also trying to help their residents remember details of their lives, what is going on here could well be the only concerted effort to re-create an entire historical era.

One widely used form of therapy involves showing patients the old tools of their trade — for example, giving a former hairdresser combs — to reactivate memories. But that approach seems to work only if the patient was enthusiastic about his or her line of work; in East Germany, where one’s choice of professions was heavily regulated by the state, few were.

Read more:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2017/12/26/a-german-nursing-home-tries-a-novel-form-of-dementia-therapy-re-creating-a-vanished-era-for-its-patients/?utm_term=.f5adb88ac551