Most of us have experienced firsthand of a loved one with dementia or at least know of someone that has the disease. An estimated 6.5 million Americans 65 years or older have Alzheimer’s. Caregiving for someone that has the disease can be quite challenging and exhausting especially as the disease progresses. As the disease progresses the person living with the disease will eventually forget how to perform ordinary daily living tasks such as household chores/upkeep, eating/cooking, bathing, personal hygiene, medication management, finances/bills, short-term memory recall, turning off appliances, and driving.
For a year I helped my family take care of my grandma whom I truly admired and had Alzheimer’s. As I watched her disease progress, she could not recall anything from her short-term memory. When she did converse, her stories were not factual, didn’t make sense, or she was reliving her past as if it was the present. During these moments we as caregivers or as a stranger should never try to correct them and make it our point to help them face the present moment. A technique that I learned years ago while overseeing a memory care community was a method called Validation Therapy.
Validation Therapy is a therapeutic method to help the person with dementia feel comforted and understood, while the listener tries to understand where the person is in their mind versus telling the person with dementia what is/is not reality. For example, if a person with dementia begins to talk about things of the past that seem present to them or they see things that we do not see, we would not try to correct them. We as the listeners would agree with what they are seeing or experiencing, while also comforting them with our understanding, and smoothly transition the focus to something else especially if they are agitated or fearful of what they are experiencing in that moment.
If you have worked with anyone that has the disease you will realize quickly that the person cannot reason or remember well. Validation Therapy helps us as the listeners to realize that we cannot try to make the person understand that what they are experiencing is not reality; they do not have the reasoning to understand. Validation Therapy focuses more on the person’s current emotional state versus what is reality, and helping them reduce their stress, worry, or fear.
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