Wednesday, March 14, 2012

Feelings of joy...

I just finished my usual newspaper column in the South Shore Senior News for April. The editor Greg always gives columnists ideas on what to write about. This month's idea struck me as a good subject to explore here too; that of laughter and positive emotions. Research shows that even if a person with memory loss doesn't hold on to the content of a pleasant movie, the positive feelings last for hours. The opposite is true of negative movies.
In the hospital I work in part time we are promoting sensory modalities; those evoking calm and pleasure through the senses. This treatment is especially helpful for persons who have experienced trauma through life (many if not most with mental illness have continuously experienced trauma) and persons with cognitive disorders. For the person with trauma, it taps the amygdala (a-mig-dil-a) to respond to positive experience instead of the negative ones remembered. For the person with dementia who now often cannot initiate, plan or execute a formerly pleasant activity,sensory experiences calm and bring joy. There we use music, rhythm like dance and exercise, smells like lemon or lavendar (even bakiing cookies),visual items like pictures and tactile sensory items like fur, suede or velvet (maybe a puppy or kitten). These therapies reduce psychiatric symptoms, confusion and restlessness by inserting positive emotive experience into the patient's life.
Have you used these activities, especially in the late afternoon when persons with dementia often are feeling lost, confused and sometimes slip into delirium.
When my father in law was restless and confused in the evening due to his Alzheimer's disease, we put a can of coins in front of him to sort. He was a 'candy man' so quite used to handling coins. Within minutes, he was 'remembering' the positive memory of his work and doing something very familiar, humming a tune as he did. This replaced the confusion and prepared him for sound sleep.

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