Friday, October 13, 2017

A new Portrait of Dementia - Brush to Canvas

Evolve at Rye Alzheimer’s residents are creating new portraits of dementia. For many who suffer from Alzheimer’s disease and related dementias, while their short-term memories may be fleeting, their long-term memories are still often intact.  Evolve’s activity director Lori Wiswell believes that reaching those long term memories is often a matter of channeling their attention to target familiar images that we all hold onto during our lives.  There is a palpable sense of enthusiasm bubbling from Lori “Here at Evolve at Rye we offer a therapeutic, multi-faceted interdisciplinary approach to activities and social and leisure programming,”  “Our goal is to provide specialized stimulation to create structure and support in meeting the physical, psychosocial, cognitive and spiritual needs of each resident, in this case it’s through the imagery of art therapy.”  Every week art therapy imagery comes to life. The artwork of the Evolve at Rye residents are on display at the community rooms for everyone to enjoy.  “We focus on the resident’s wellness and the holistic needs, rather than the losses that the disease causes,” explains Lori.  By focusing and building upon remaining abilities, projects such as these can build the confidence of the residents, rather than reminding them of what they may be losing.  All program components are designed to provide “failure-free” stimulation according to the cognitive ability of each resident.  The intimate homey environment offers unique structure for early and later stage residents separately which enables staff to individualize programming for each resident.  “Our programming is designed to provide stimulation within each resident’s capabilities that is confidence building and success oriented,” concluded Lori. 

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