Caring for a loved one with a condition like dementia at home can be stressful and emotionally draining, but it can also be extremely rewarding. As the disease progresses, individuals can become confused about time and place, have memory loss, get frustrated more easily, become socially isolated, depressed, and generally less able to complete day-to-day tasks. As dementia patients’ lack of insight grows, the desire to care for them at home can wane, but with the right activities and thoughtful engagement, caregivers can help maintain and even enhance their loved one’s quality of life. We will explore different activities and engagement strategies that might provide moments of joy, elevate the spirit, and foster connections for those living with dementia at home.
Understanding the Importance of Activities in Dementia Care
Engaging in activities is crucial for individuals with dementia for several reasons:
- Preserving Cognitive Function, by stimulating brain activity through various activities that keep the mind engaged.
- Preventing anxiety and depression: Frequent engagement in rewarding actions increases your mood and helps to prevent anxiety and depression.
- Enhancing Physical Health: Physical activities can help maintain mobility, balance, and overall physical health.
- Make Social Connections: Doing things with others can help to overcome feelings of isolation and loneliness.
- Purpose-driven activities: these are activities that are personally meaningful and purposeful for the person.
Tailoring Activities to the Individual’s Abilities and Interests
A key part of being able to plan activities is to ensure they are suitable to the person’s ability, interests, and stage of dementia, and for this reason: ‘You can’t do Barbara’s activity with someone else’. These factors will impact whether the activity is suitable.
- Current Abilities: Select activities to match the recipient’s current formal/informal cognitive/physical ability. If the activity is not appropriate to a person’s current abilities, it becomes challenging when abilities are lost and/or it’s less motivating.
- Present Interests: What are her present-day activities, interests, and work? A hobby or interest in common can be particularly enriching. Past Interests: If he can tell me what he used to do for fun or work, this can provide a lifeline to recollections.
- Cultural activities pastimes: It is helpful to focus on activities that are part of your cultural background and traditions that are familiar to you and culturally comforting.
- Personal choices: Use the person’s interests or favourites when possible. This gives people a feeling of making a real choice, and it also helps to ensure they’re doing something they enjoy.
Types of Activities for Dementia Patients
1. Cognitive Stimulation Activities
Cognitive stimulation means brain-training activities, and engaging in programs or pursuits that keep you on your toes. This can delay cognitive decline.
- Puzzles and games Playing straightforward puzzles such as wooden ones with interlocking gears, or more challenging ones like crossword puzzles, along with memory games (concentration) and matching games, can all fortify cognitive capacity.
- Reading and Storytelling: reading books, magazines, or short stories can stimulate the mind. If you find reading difficult, listen to audiobooks or ask somebody to read to you.
- Brain-Training Apps: Several apps doing cognitive exercises for feeble-minded patients with dementia.
2. Physical Activities
It is generally agreed that physical activity is necessary to preserve one’s health and positive mood. In addition, engaging in exercise is one of the best options to deal with restlessness.
- Walking Get regular walks – inside or outside, to help keep you mobile and as a source of scenery change.
- Dancing: If you like music, dancing is a great way to get fitter. You can do it alone or socially, around your home, or with a group.
- Chair Exercises: For those with limited mobility, chair exercises can provide gentle physical activity.
- Gardening: gardening is easy to work into the text. Just changing the letters a little. Watering a plant or placing a seed in the soil is an enjoyable experience even for handicapped people.
3. Creative and Artistic Activities
Creative activities allow individuals to express themselves and can be very therapeutic.
- Art Projects: Colouring with pencils, crayons, and paint is a fun and calming pastime. Try non-toxic and kid-friendly materials so that the job can be safely and readily done.
- Music Therapy: playing an instrument or singing with others, even listening to your favourite music brings back memories and gets people engaged with you. The memories cause happiness and sadness and can encourage many interactions alone or with others. We’ve found that music from their youth often brings back the most memories.
- Knitting: The rhythm of producing a piece of warm clothing is a great source of satisfaction.Collaging: There’s a good feeling of achievement after constructing a collage of striking colours and shapes.Clay: The reward of a handmade vase or sculpture provides an immense sense of accomplishment.
4. Sensory Activities
Sensory activities are especially useful for people with later-stage dementia, as they can soothe and engage the senses.
- Aromatherapy: lavender can be used to calm an individual; rosemary can provide more energy
- Miniature Messages: Rubbing lotion into her hands is a sensory experience that serves less as a massage than as a gentle, soothing touch.
- Sensory Box: This is a box packed using objects that can be touched, smelled, or listened to. It might include soft fabrics, scented sachets, or objects that make noise when shaken.
5. Reminiscence Activities
Reminiscing is all about recollecting past experiences, the memories of which can be both relaxing and stimulating for those with dementia.
- Memory Box: Items, photographs, and memorabilia by the deceased create a post-funeral box of memories. Together you can look back at this box and share memories.
- Photo Albums: Looking through old photo albums and discussing the people and events in the pictures can be a powerful springboard.
- Music-of-your-youth: Listen to music that you associate with your younger years. You’ll get memories and feelings of those times.
6. Social Activities
Maintaining social connections is important for mental and emotional well-being.
- Family visits: Regular visits from family members help to avoid complete alienation.
- Community groups: It’s worth attending community groups, or other social gatherings for people with dementia if possible.
Those who cannot meet people in the flesh can also video-call to maintain a social life.
Creating a Supportive Environment for Activities
The environment has a major role in activity success, encouraging an environment can make any workout to be more engaging, helpful, and stress relieving.
- Avoid Distractions: Choose a quiet area, with a comfortable chair so that they can feel more relaxed and have a greater focus of attention.
- Maintain a routine: Having a regular schedule for activities will help keep you anchored.
- Encouragement: Give encouragement and positive reinforcement while you’re doing it! Praise them when they’re doing well, and have fun. Appreciate small accomplishments and help keep play enthusiastic.
- Don’t be too rigid: be ready to switch activities if necessary. If an activity is not working out, it is fine to change to a different activity or adapt the current one.
- Promote Safety: Be sure activities are safely planned. Check for a safe environment and that the individual has a way to participate without risk.
The Role of Caregivers in Facilitating Activities
Carers must ‘mould’ the patient’s activities to accommodate their unique capabilities: Specific tasks to which the capacities of the demented patient are best fitted: Carer’s capacity to perform the task with the least effort Getting food into a demented and silent patient: transferring the patient, ramming the spoon, shoving the fork, cutting the food etc are of a demented patient: washing inaccessible parts of the body, changing bedclothes and dressing.
- Take your time: be patient and understanding. Dementia can leave people frustrated and confused. They need someone calm and reassuring.
- Let them do it themselves: even though you need to give support as well, you can encourage your friend to be as autonomous as possible in participating in activities.
- Monitor Responses: If an individual cannot stay on task during an activity, observe their responses for cues that it is time to switch activities. If the student is frustrated or doesn’t seem to be enjoying the activity anymore, it’s probably time to try something new.
- Celebrate Successes: No success ever arrives out of thin air, so celebrate all your successes, even the little ones. Celebrate and you will carve out a niche for yourself and get out of that rut.
- Care for our Caregivers: Engaging with someone with Dementia Care at Home can be an emotionally and physically draining experience. Self-care is part of reducing the risk of burnout.
Success Stories: Enhancing Quality of Life Through Activities
Case Study 1: The Power of Music Therapy
Mrs Garcia, an 82-year-old woman with advanced dementia, became agitated in the evenings and roamed the halls of her long-term care facility. The certified nursing assistant (CNA) for the unit, Maria, noticed that Mrs Garcia became calmer if she sang along to music from her past. Maria introduced musical budgets to the evening routine for Mrs Garcia. She put on recordings of Spanish folk songs, which were familiar to Mrs Garcia and which she enjoyed. A pair of familiar headphones allowed her to close her eyes and listen to the music while the walking stopped. The agitation diminished, and the singalong brought a smile to Mrs Garcia’s face. She often sang along. In turn, the evening agitation disappeared. She seemed more content and relaxed.
Case Study 2: Gardening for Emotional Well-being
Sarah Hines noticed her dad, Mr. Thompson, a retired teacher with mid-stage dementia, was feeling listless. He had always enjoyed gardening, so she started bringing him plants to care for. They eventually worked on a garden bed at a local library and a window box for flowers. The simple tasks of planting, watering, and pruning gave him a sense of purpose and accomplishment. When she saw him smiling again, she gave him a new pair of gardening gloves, which he wore with pride, continuing to enjoy his gardening.
What are some dementia-friendly community events and clubs?
Examples of appropriate community events and clubs that might provide engagement for a person with dementia include:
Memory Cafés
Memory cafés are sociable public spaces where people with dementia can go and mix with their caregivers as well as other people, take part in activities, talk about their problems, and increase their knowledge. They are typically equipped with:
- Arts and crafts projects
- Music and singing
- Reminiscence activities using photos, objects, or videos
- Gentle exercise like chair yoga or Tai Chi
Refreshments and snacks
In the memory café, people with Dementia Care at Home can mingle with others whose memory is also slipping. Casual, lighthearted interactions serve as a model for how people who are losing themselves can be understood, acknowledged, and appreciated without shame.
Singing for the Brain
One example of this is Singing for the Brain, run by organisations such as the Alzheimer’s Society, where people with dementia come together to sing a wide variety of songs. Singing is a brain-friendly activity and has been found to enhance mood, well-being, and social interaction, helping people to interact with each other. These social interactions are led by a trained facilitator and are a fun way to keep these individuals engaged using the power of music.
Dementia-Friendly Cinema Screenings
Some cinemas hold regular screenings of favourite older films for people with dementia and their caregivers. Adaptations include lower sound levels and lighting, offering a dementia-friendly environment for social and reminiscing engagement.
Dementia-Friendly Sporting Events
Football matches and other sporting events can be adapted so that they are more suitable for people living with dementia. This adaption could include:
- Quiet rooms for people who need a break from the noise and crowds
- Dementia-friendly signage and staff training
- Reduced ticket prices for caregivers
- Tailored matchday programs with larger text and images
Going along to a local football match, which is a familiar experience, can thus create a sense of normality, and connection.
Dementia-Friendly Walking Groups
Local ‘dementia-friendly’ walking groups can also be a mostly gentle form of exercise but, unlike the previous two activities, take place in a group context. These groups are often promoted as good for mental as well as physical health. They usually have a set, graded route, and a designated leader, and the pace is adapted to the abilities of the group members. Some will have routes that incorporate aspects of reminiscence or sensory stimulation during the walk.
These sorts of dementia-friendly community events and clubs can keep people with dementia activities, and be a reminder of life’s possibilities in their local community. They also provide opportunities for respite for carers.
Meaningful activities can greatly improve the quality of home life for people with Dementia Care at Home. They can provide mental stimulation, physical exercise, emotional connection, and a sense of purpose. While caregivers might struggle to adapt established activities to the changing needs of the patient, remaining flexible and open to new ideas can encourage the dementia patient to live as full and joyful a life as possible. Activities should be tailored to the current abilities and interests of the individual, a suitable environment should be created, and any barriers to participation should be addressed. The most effective caregivers are patient and compassionate with their charges.
The right activities, whether with cognitive games, physical exercises, creative arts, sensory stimulation, or social exchange, can make the difference between a disheartening day for someone with dementia, or a day that is truly enriching, in which they can maintain some degree of dignity, and know that they are valued and loved.
