Dementia is something my family has been affected by so I feel like I already have a good knowledge of the topic and a personal insight into the issue I am working with. When I was visiting my nana in an advanced dementia/nursing care home I managed to take a few photos of the environment and also speak to some of the staff about the issue of dementia and an ageing population.
The carers explained that they try to make the environment as homely as possible and full of memories (if this is appropriate for the individual). Personal photographs can help to keep things familiar and also objects and ornaments that they may recognise. It depends on the severity of the dementia, some patients are past the point of being able to recognise family members.
In the corridors of the care home they have lots of pictures of old fashioned branding, postcards, adverts, etc which the carers said are all there to help trigger memories from earlier in the patient’s lives.
I have seen on numerous occasions people who cannot remember their own family who are sitting right in front of them but they can remember all the words to songs from the 50s. It’s really baffling but the condition is obviously really complex.
They explained to me about the street names too. Each corridor has a street name and each room has a ‘house’ number. For some dementia patients, its important to them that they still feel independent and having their own ‘address’ is part of this. They also said that for a lot of patients its best to go along with what they say to avoid constant confrontation and upsets by explaining their situations. The most important thing is keeping them happy and playing a part within the world they think they are in is comforting to them. What is agitating is trying to explain to them the real life situation they are in.
Along the handrails in the corridors there are stuffed toys, musical instruments and textured objects. Apparently a lot of dementia patients have problems with the signals from their senses to their brain but having something tactile to touch is a reassuring experience. Things that are comforting to touch can be settling, especially when their sight and hearing may be impaired as a part of the condition and they struggle to build up a picture in their mind of where they actually are.
Today has been a really interesting and eye opening experience for me. I have had a personal experience of seeing someone suffer with dementia, I have seen how it affects and individual and a whole family but today I learnt more about how it is dealt with and the care aspect of the issue.
Because I have this personal connection to the issue I think the work I produce will feel more genuine and authentic than the work I may have produced for an issue I have no real experience of. Therefore choosing this topic will make the commodification of the issue even more noticeable and feel more deceptive and insincere to me personally. Hopefully it will make people understand that this is what is occurring in consumer culture all the time, social issues are commodified (often quite heartlessly) to sell products.
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