How Aged Care Centers Cure Aged Alzheimer’s Victims?

They say, “Music can bring back thousands of memories.” They don’t lie. Music can give you Goosebumps or even makes your spine tingle. Moments like when you first fell in love, a dinner date with your loved ones, a sense of freedom when you travelled overseas, etc. becomes real within the first few bars. 

That’s why old age care agencies are using music as a cure for those who are suffering from Alzheimer’s. Aged Care Melbourne believes that music therapy can help Alzheimer’s patients to recall their old life and the ones they loved before. It can tap into deep emotional evoke, giving profound uplifting.

With the sense of isolation, fading memories, and hard communication, an Alzheimer’s sufferer goes through increased distress and anxiety. For loved ones, it’s devastating to watch. The spouse, sibling, or parents are not “there” anymore. Sometimes, it feels like Alzheimer’s takes away the person they once were.

In many aged homes Melbourne, music therapy has been introduced to the sufferers that give them hope of remembering some of the segments of their lives. In this therapy, a customized playlist is created for every individual to help them reconnect the world via music-triggered memories.

Dan Levi is the very first person to initial this gracious program. He had this idea “if I were ever in nursing or old age home, having access to music would have fueled my ambitions.” And this thought gave him an urge to provide elders of the local area with iPods so they could listen to their favorite music. Over time, the program became global. It was a huge hit with inhabitants, their families, and staff.

A documentary was released in 2012 – Alive Inside: A Story of Music and Memory. In this documentary, an iPod was given to an Alzheimer’s patient named Henry who has been in a nursing home for 10 years. He hardly remembered anyone from his family. But, when the earphones were put on, he started humming and his hands started to groove with the music. His facial expressions were changed and he seemed more attentive than before. Then the examiner asked a few questions.

Henry responded to all the questions and also remembered how much he used to love the music. He even remembered his favorite song too.

Some research showed that music – even when most of the brain has stopped functioning properly – can bring it back to life.

Music therapy reached to everyone’s emotions and memories that are otherwise completely gone.

“The past which is not recoverable in any other way is embedded, as if in amber, in the music, and people can regain a sense of identity…”– Late Oliver Sacks (a neurologist and author)

Final Thoughts

Music has the power to knot Alzheimer’s patients with what’s left behind. Fortunately, many Aged Care Melbourne east and nursing agencies has adapted this useful therapy and have succeeded in recovering many patients’ memories.