"Memory Cafes" offer support for people with memory loss and their caregivers

Well Spouse Association helps spouses manage the mental and physical challenges of caregiving. The nonprofit offers support groups, respite weekends that give caregivers time to take care of themselves and other responsibilities, and other resources. The relationships members build with each other help combat feelings of loneliness and isolation. With just 20 chapters nationwide, many members travel long distances to access the support and services, though moving meetings online due to the coronavirus pandemic had the effect of expanding membership and several members have also started local chapters.

Connecting with art enriches the lives of patients struggling with dementia and Alzheimers. Across Germany, several programs are using art to stimulate the minds of an aging population. At the Lehmbruck Museum in Duisburg, seniors meet to discuss art pieces that affect them. Elsewhere, in Bonn, the Demezionen theater ensemble performs for retirement homes. And even clowns can bring a positive atmosphere to seniors struggling with dementia!

Assistive, wearable technology has been developed to send tactile or visual information to the brain in order to address mental or physiological challenges. One company has made a bracelet that can calm or energize a person through heartbeat-like pulses, while another created a shoe that projects forward a short colored laser to overcome the ‘frozen gait’ experienced by people with Parkinson’s disease.

What can you do to enjoy time with Alzheimer’s patients? A suburb near San Diego has recently opened a new town square with architecture designed to look like it is from the 1950s. The space offers aging baby boomers with dementia or Alzheimer’s a place to enjoy and interact with nostalgia.

More than five million Americans have Alzheimer’s or similar illnesses, and that number is growing as the population ages - without any immediate prospect of a cure, advocacy groups have begun promoting ways to offer people with dementia a comfortable decline instead of imposing on them a medical model of care, which seeks to defer death through escalating interventions. An Arizona nursing home offers new ways to care for people with dementia.

Bogotá's Manzanas del Cuidado (Caregiving Blocks) provides free services like education, counseling, and skills training at 25 neighborhood locations to reduce the burden on women caregivers, successfully empowering participants to complete high school, gain new skills, and find employment opportunities. It's become a pioneering model in Latin America for recognizing unrenumerating labors. Read this article in Spanish here: https://solu.news/zfxr

Trans Houses are community shelters created by and for trans women in Bolivia that offer comprehensive health services, psychological support, legal assistance, and entrepreneurship opportunities, evolving from basic assistance spaces into collective emancipation platforms that have served over 2,500 people across four cities and are expanding as a replicable model of social transformation. This story is available in Spanish here: https://solu.news/1qka

The nurse-led nonprofit program Alta helps Black faith communities in Georgia run dementia-friendly congregations. The programming includes things like adapting services to be shorter with more music, educating community members about dementia, and $1,000 for things like resources and events.

Virtual memory cafes for people with dementia are able to reach more people, avoid transportation and mobility barriers, and open new possibilities — like making new friends across the ocean. First pioneered in the Netherlands in the 1990s, memory cafes have spread around the world as a way for people experiencing memory loss and caregivers can find community and companionship.

The Partners in Caring Respite program pairs volunteers with people in the early stages of cognitive neurological disorders — like dementia — to offer care and companion programs, allowing them to build relationships and provide respite for family caregivers. Partners in Caring has expended to four counties across the state, serving over 400 families with its 70 on-call volunteers.