BY NORM TOLLINSKY
A dementia art program offered by the Alzheimer’s Society of North Bay & District is opening new vistas for Alzheimer’s patients at nursing homes and retirement living residences in North Bay and surrounding communities.
Challenged by memory loss and difficulty expressing themselves verbally, Alzheimer’s patients often exhibit symptoms of depression, agitation and aggression, explained Ashleigh Riley, an artist and graduate of Canadore College’s Social Service Worker program.
“The dementia art program serves as an outlet for them to express their feelings,” she said. “They’ve lost their way of living, so this is one thing they can be in control of.”
The Alzheimer’s Society of North Bay introduced the program in January 2011 and has funding from the Ontario Trillium Foundation to continue offering it until November 2012.
Riley offers patients a wide variety of art supplies and media, from watercolours and washable acrylic paints to colouring pages, mandalas and clay for modeling.
Participants are often skeptical of their abilities at first, but “once they sit down and create something, the artistic talent comes out,” said Riley.
In July, a selection of the work produced through the program was exhibited at two galleries in North Bay, with proceeds from the sale of the art going back into the art program, said Riley.
While an art program such as the one delivered by the Alzheimer’s Society of North Bay & District has value, it’s not exactly art therapy, said Sara Roesler, a graduate of the Kutenai Art Therapy Institute and an art therapist at the North Bay Regional Health Centre.
Roesler, who has experience working with both dementia and mental health patients, explains that the “focus isn’t on the aesthetic of the art. It’s on the process of making it, how they are using the art material, what’s coming out on the paper and how they interact with me.
“In a session that I run with a patient, we might have 45 minutes of art making time and 15 or 20 minutes of follow-up, discussing the art, having them look at it and telling me what they see, drawing out meaning.”
Art therapy can be an effective way of encouraging the expression of feelings when verbal communication isn’t possible. It boosts self-esteem, promotes increased concentration and allows the release of repressed feelings. In addition to working with dementia and mental health patients, art therapists work with children diagnosed with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, palliative care patients and people suffering from post traumatic stress disorder.
“As much as engaging in art making can be healing, if it’s not facilitated by someone who is trained to recognize what’s happening for a patient, there can be danger, too, in terms of not having closure at the end of a session,” said Roesler. “It’s not just about making pretty pictures.”
By participating in an activity that they are capable of, dementia patients are able to maintain a sense of purpose, said Dr. Jo-Anne Clarke, consulting geriatrician with the North East Specialized Geriatric Services.
In the absence of non-pharmacological modalities like art therapy and music therapy, “we see more depressive symptoms, more agitation and more purposeless activities like wandering, which is the sort of behaviour that has in the past had us reaching for medications such as anti-depressants and anti-psychotics,” said Clarke.
Monica Bretzlaff, who until recently served as psychogeriatric resource consultant with the North Bay Regional Health Centre and now manages the Regional Specialized Dementia Care Program at the hospital’s Kirkwood Place site in Sudbury, said, “we’re doing a lot for dementia patients, but we can always do more.
“It’s certainly a population we need to focus on given the imminent tsunami of baby boomers and the increased number of people with dementia that we will have to care for in the future,” said Bretzlaff. “The statistics are astounding, so we should be tapping into all these various therapies and making them an integral part of the health-care team. There are so many professionals that we don’t fully utilize.”
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