Dementia is a serious loss of global cognitive ability in a previously unimpaired person, beyond what might be expected from normal aging. Affected cognitive areas can be memory, attention, language, and problem solving.
The beginning of this problem can be noticed when
people do not remember what they ate in the morning, or where they left their
socks. This first symptom is related to the short term memory, since they do
not remember what happened minutes ago. With the pass of the time, it affects
long term memory and they even forget the names of their friends, their relatives,
friends...
Other symptoms appear when they cannot take adequate decisions for some actions, and it is related to their basic thought, since they think of an idea in a visual or figurative way rather than abstract ideas.
All this makes them feel confused and produces changes
in their mood and behaviour. One day they may be aggressive, another they may
feel depressed, or sad, or even nervous, neurotic or anxious. In fact, they can
be scared when they do not know which the way to their room is.
However, dementia may be manifested in a very
different way depending on the person, and the process is very slow.
This is why people working in the Elderly Centre
propose so many activities to work their mental and sense skills in order to
reduce and slow this procedure.
They invented a game to work with the sense of smell
and touch. They filled balloons with lentils, rice and coffee, and put some
spices and ingredients from the kitchen in some jars. The grandparents need to
guess which the ingredient is by touching or smelling it.
Another game was with a ball. The grandparents pass
the ball to each other, and every time they pick it up they need to name
animals, food, or whatever is proposed, and the words they say must begin by
the agreed letter. With this game they are training their memory without being
aware of it, and in a funny way.
Because “those with dementia are still people, and
they still have stories, and they still have character. And they're all
individuals, and they're all unique. And they just need to be interacted with
on a human level”.
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