A class designed for sufferers of dementia titled “LIFE 101: Coping with Mild Memory Loss,” was cancelled by the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute (OLLI) due to a shortage of participants. The class, scheduled to begin mid-March, had a successful session during the Fall 2006 semester.
Nancy Richeson, an associate professor in the College of Nursing and Health Professions and gerontologist, and E. Michael Brady, a professor in the College of Education and Human Resource Development and senior research associate at OLLI, offered the memory loss course to 12 participants with a diagnosis of mild cognitive disorder or early-stage dementia who ranged in age from their late 60s to early 80s.
The OLLI class offered last fall was part of a broader project called “Health Promotion for the Mind, Body and Spirit: Teaching People with Memory Loss.” The course was created by Suzanne Fitzsimmons and Linda Buettner, co-directors of the Southwest Florida Center for Positive Aging. Richeson and Brady will present their findings from the fall class to the Gerontological Society of America in Novermber of this year to a group of people who have been teaching the same class around the country and overseas.
Each session of the 13-week program addressed issues such as healthy behaviors, depression coping skills, recreation and leisure and cognitive activities.
“(Dementia is) a chronic disease. People can live from anywhere between three to 20 years,” Richeson said. “That’s a long time to just sit and wait. There’s a need to maintain a quality of life.”
The March class was cancelled because only about half of the course’s 12 enrollment slots had been filled. Richeson said some of the people from the last class had been interested in the March class. She said possibly some had moved, did not have transportation, or maybe were deterred by the title of the course.
“I don’t understand why it didn’t go this time,” said Brady. “It may be the title itself didn’t turn people on.”
Christopher Thacher, 74, has Alzheimer’s. He took the class last fall. “It was a very good experience and I learned a great deal,” he said.
Thacher plays the viola and his partner plays the cello. The two performed for the class during week nine focusing on life experiences and lifelong learning and the group loved them. “It was great fun playing Telemann and Bach,” he said. “They would like us to hit the road.”
Although the overall outcome of the class was positive, they faced challenges as well.
Richeson remembers a man who dropped the class two weeks shy of completing the thirteen week course. “He felt it was depressing to watch people who were further along in the disease,” she said. “He struggled with that.to know where he might end up.”
Brady said keeping students on track was sometimes a difficulty. “Because of the change in their mental situation,” he said, “they would start talking about something and end up somewhere else.”
However, the few challenges were minor compared to the individual connections made in the class.
“They were really willing to share some pretty deeply intrapersonal things like their fear about losing their memory,” Brady said.
Thacher felt this goal was achieved in the class. “It was a wonderful bonding situation.”
Kali Lightfoot, director of OLLI at USM, described the goal of the nearly 100 Osher Institutes nationwide as a way “to let people really have fun learning something with some intellectual meat to it.”
Both professors agreed the shortage was not because the previous class was unpleasant for the participants.
“It was planned to be just a one-time thing,” said Brady. “It was the feedback we received in the process of the course last fall that emboldened us (to do) a part two.”
Richeson and Brady plan to offer the course again at a date to be announced later.