Try: The loss of cognitive abilities resulting from dementia and alzheimer’s disease can cover a broad spectrum there can be a loss of various skills including communication skills independence and logic among others there may be very little chance for a "re-habilitation" of these skills the definition of "rehabilitation" is to restore lost abilities in the case of dementia a better therapy is simply "habilitation" therapy which is to make the most of the skills that remain and focus more on the cr’s emotional and psychological capacity habilitation therapy focuses on creating and maintaining a positive emotional state throughout the course of the day this can be done by utilizing a pro-active approach to cultivate satisfying moments and memories to ease the stress for both the caregiver (cg) and the Care recipient (cr) examples of "habilitation" therapy" that may be helpful to caregivers enter the cr’s world and moment in time for example if being twenty-two years of age is what makes the cr happiest it will be useless to point out that his or her eighty-second birthday was just celebrated communicate on an emotional level make your tone inflection and body language positive and comforting no matter what message you are trying to get across by maintaining a constant uplifting mood you will project a message of safety and well-being to the cr who may be experiencing agitation fear and frustration reduce distractions and simplify the environment too much noise clutter or even people can cause the cr to be nervous and upset encourage and promote the cr’s remaining skills if the cr enjoyed cooking looking at cookbooks and planning menus may bring about fond memories of family dinners even though the ability to cook may be lost by encouraging and allowing the cr to maximize remaining skills there may be less frustration embarrassment and fear of being unable to function at the former level of independence listen with all of your senses if the cr has difficulty communicating with words look beyond the words to the facial expressions and emotional tones in the voice to distinguish possible pain validate feelings if the cr is angry and lashes out sympathize with their right to be angry and or hurt over situations information references adapted from p raia ph d ; habilitation therapy in dementia care; j coste; learning to speak alzheimer’s
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*This information is listed as a Fact Sheet and is not explicitly medically licensed