The title here is not original. I wish it were! The phrase comes from Al Power, M.D., author of DEMENTIA BEYOND DRUGS. This morning the St. Louis Post-Dispatch carried an article about research being done at St. Louis University (SLU) to study the effects of Ritalin on persons living with Alzheimer’s. I read the article amidst several mental alarms going off.
Source of one alarm: persons living with Alzheimer’s, according to their family members, often display apathy, social withdrawal, loss of enthusiasm and indifference. Alarm: what might be some underlying causes of an apparent emotional change? Other medications? Bcoming depersonalized via an institutional task-oriented nursing home environment? Boredom? Lonliness?The sense of losing one's self in the institution?
Never fear, help is on the way! No need to reflect or investigate external stressors. A pharmaceutical company paid this SLU MD/professor $ 183,540 to see if their product might be just the right intervention, “well-being in a pill.” Oh, another thing, this same company, according to the article paid the professor $28,000 in 2010 to speak to other physicians about its products. Hmmmm.
In his book, Powers points out that all of the research done on the use of antipsychotics for persons living with dementia were funded by --- guess who --- yep, pharmaceutical companies.
Second alarm. This logic is presented by the SLU physician-researcher in this morning’s article: if a person is depressed, s/he is less focused on the environment and therefore at greater risk for falls. So if individuals have “greater energy” they will be more focused on their environment and less likely to fall. Pass the pills!
I wrote to Dr. Power about this article and asked his opinion. He wrote back saying that there has been some benefit in the use of Ritalin for depression, “but it's not well-studied, and it begs the question of whether we just continue to try and sell well-being in a pill.”
Dr. Power has a blog which can be found at www.changinganging.org. In a recent post, Power states succinctly the misplaced role of drugs for persons living with dementia in typical nursing homes. He says this: “The bigger issue is the inability to realize that much distress comes from our institutionalized, dehumanized approach to care for people with dementia. The real problem lies not so much with one particular class of drugs, but rather the idea that ANY pill is the solution to unmet needs or environmental stressors." (Emphasis mine.)
If you have not read DEMENTIA BEYOND DRUGS, you're missing a whole new world of understanding of dementia and a world of hope beyond its too-often-prescribed drugs.
Thursday, January 31, 2013
Tuesday, January 15, 2013
“If You Change Your Words You Can Change the World” or “Never Say ‘Pet Therapy’”
Imagine you are returning home from a day’s work, from a trip, or from the grocery story. You have a pet at home – a dog we’ll call Lucy. You know what to expect when Lucy sees you: Lucy’s tail begins to wag energetically. She may bound up to you and wants to lick your face. You automatically reach down to pet her, to receive her unconditional love, her pure doggie affection. You automatically smile and even chuckle a little over this creature in your life, this creature who affords such delight by her very being, such company and comfort.
Now step back mentally from this image. Would you use the word “pet therapy” to describe the effect on you of Lucy’s warm greeting and presence? Would you describe Lucy to others as your therapy dog?
What do we mean when we use the word ‘therapy’? A quick Internet search surfaced these definitions.
--“Therapy” the treatment of disease or disorders, as by some remedial, rehabilitating, or curative process: speech therapy.
-- Therapy is the action taken to begin a healing process.
-- Therapy is a session where (sic) a health professional aims to provide remedial or compensatory strategies and treatment to improve a participant’s function or well-being. It may first involve assessment of needs, then planning of goals, treatment and finally, review of progress / success of treatment.
What all the definitions have in common, and what we also instinctively conclude when we hear or use the word ‘therapy’, is that it is an approach to addressing a deficit, a treatment to cure an illness, to bring health in place of a lack of it. It is a medical term.
Many nursing homes and assisted living communities have pets who live in ‘the community, and/or pets that are brought in on occasion. That’s a good thing! What is not so good in the vast majority of these circumstances is that the pets are labeled “therapy dogs” or “therapy cats”.
In these circumstances the ‘therapy dogs’ “help combat loneliness, helplessness and boredom among seniors at nursing care centers by offering sensory stimuli and a way to give and receive affection.” (Source is at link below. Accessed January 15, 2013.)
Is this how you or I view the impact our pets have on us? You get it, don’t you. In such labeling, we are medicalizing a human experience. We are medicalizing the normal human activities of interacting with another creature, a pet. We are also revealing the fact that our view of our residents is not holistic but medical.
In the movement of transformational culture change in which the nursing home moves from INSTITUTION to HOME, pets are seen, experienced and described for the wonderful creatures they are, for the gift they give to all of us. You know, just like you and I experience our pets at HOME.
We make changes in our practices and in our concepts by changing our words. Let’s use words that express what we really intend. The delight, the company, the gift of domesticated animal creatures living in or visiting our home is “pet”. Period.
Read about therapy dogs at
http://wcfcourier.com/lifestyles/resident-therapy-dog-brightens-seniors-days/article_ef0657bf-2ef1-5839-913c-7995251a3f7a.html
Now step back mentally from this image. Would you use the word “pet therapy” to describe the effect on you of Lucy’s warm greeting and presence? Would you describe Lucy to others as your therapy dog?
What do we mean when we use the word ‘therapy’? A quick Internet search surfaced these definitions.
--“Therapy” the treatment of disease or disorders, as by some remedial, rehabilitating, or curative process: speech therapy.
-- Therapy is the action taken to begin a healing process.
-- Therapy is a session where (sic) a health professional aims to provide remedial or compensatory strategies and treatment to improve a participant’s function or well-being. It may first involve assessment of needs, then planning of goals, treatment and finally, review of progress / success of treatment.
What all the definitions have in common, and what we also instinctively conclude when we hear or use the word ‘therapy’, is that it is an approach to addressing a deficit, a treatment to cure an illness, to bring health in place of a lack of it. It is a medical term.
Many nursing homes and assisted living communities have pets who live in ‘the community, and/or pets that are brought in on occasion. That’s a good thing! What is not so good in the vast majority of these circumstances is that the pets are labeled “therapy dogs” or “therapy cats”.
In these circumstances the ‘therapy dogs’ “help combat loneliness, helplessness and boredom among seniors at nursing care centers by offering sensory stimuli and a way to give and receive affection.” (Source is at link below. Accessed January 15, 2013.)
Is this how you or I view the impact our pets have on us? You get it, don’t you. In such labeling, we are medicalizing a human experience. We are medicalizing the normal human activities of interacting with another creature, a pet. We are also revealing the fact that our view of our residents is not holistic but medical.
In the movement of transformational culture change in which the nursing home moves from INSTITUTION to HOME, pets are seen, experienced and described for the wonderful creatures they are, for the gift they give to all of us. You know, just like you and I experience our pets at HOME.
We make changes in our practices and in our concepts by changing our words. Let’s use words that express what we really intend. The delight, the company, the gift of domesticated animal creatures living in or visiting our home is “pet”. Period.
Read about therapy dogs at
http://wcfcourier.com/lifestyles/resident-therapy-dog-brightens-seniors-days/article_ef0657bf-2ef1-5839-913c-7995251a3f7a.html
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