For working adults with elderly parents showing signs of dementia and other aging issues, the choices seem equally difficult: Quit their jobs to help the parent, hire someone else to do the same, or consider assisted living or a nursing home. Increasingly, people in this position are turning to adult day centers, which like their equivalents for pre-schoolers offer recreation, socialization, and mental stimulation during the daytime.
For working adults with elderly parents showing signs of dementia and other aging issues, the choices seem equally difficult: Quit their jobs to help the parent, hire someone else to do the same, or consider assisted living or a nursing home.
Through arts and crafts, word and number games, field trips and other creative enterprises, elderly clients can slow dementia and even Alzheimer’s disease, says Alicia Fahr, PhD, adjunct faculty member in the School of Human Services.
“These activities get different centers of their brains moving,” Fahr says. Art, in particular, can have dramatic benefits: “It gives them hope. It’s like creating life again.”
Lower cost, less stress
Less expensive than in-home care, assisted living, and nursing homes, adult day centers can reduce stress for the extended family. Now Fahr, who holds a doctorate in counselor education and supervision with an emphasis on gerontology, would like to take it a step further by offering mental health counseling at the adult daycare center for the entire family. Fahr would like to help families address the changes that come with dementia and other aging issues.
“Everything has just changed” for the family, she says. “Dynamics have changed, rules are changing. We want to teach the family how to cope with anger, with depression so that everybody learns what is going on.” That includes the elderly parents, who are often painfully aware of their own decline.
Brining the family together
“They know they’re a burden,” she says. “They feel they’re ruining their adult children’s lives, their grandchildren’s lives. They have a high rate of suicide.” But with the right intervention, families can learn to communicate and adjust, she says.
Fahr, who teaches gerontology courses at Capella, says counseling can help families cope with dementia in the following ways:
• Lessen fears by providing facts about dementia
• Help the family feel like a cohesive group, facing the challenge together
• Provide resources to help the family cope with the disease
• Promote healthy interactions between family members and the person afflicted with dementia
• Remove the sense of isolation that often overwhelms families in this situation
• Instill hope that dementia is manageable.
Resources:
National Adult Day Services Association
State associations such as Minnesota Adult Day Services Association
American Art Therapy Association
Contact Alicia Fahr
This entry was posted on Thursday, July 10th, 2008 at 10:09 am and is filed under Alumni, Learners, Mental Health. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
