New alzheimers treatment pioneered

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Manchester Evening News
Rachel Hoyes
1/12/2008

A REVOLUTIONARY low-stress method in caring for Alzheimer's and other dementia patients is being pioneered in a Bury nursing home.

Carers are trained to allow patients to re-experience their long-term memories as they please, giving them more freedom and minimal reliance on medication.

Staff at Gorsey Clough in Tottington, the first care home in the north west to adopt the method, will work closely with individual patients and their relatives to find out about their lives before they had dementia, allowing them to understand the memories they are re-living.

Eric Dalton, 81, whose wife Vera, 85, is an Alzheimer's patient at Gorsey Clough, said: "The new method lets patients be as they want to be. That's how I've always treated Vera - I go along with her world. The sooner you accept that the betterAt Gorsey Clough patients are allowed a tremendous amount of freedom and can do what they like."

Collette Conway, Home Manager at Gorsey Clough which has 18 residents with dementia, said: "Normally Alzheimer's sufferers are oriented in what is happening now, but instead of this the carers try to get into their worlds - the person with dementia is never treated as wrong.

"Many dementia sufferers follow their own 'missions'. For example, one lady may decide she wants to wear her coat inside all day. Many care......read the whole story