Scrapbooking and Alzheimer's

Did you know that September is World Alzheimer's Awareness Month? 

Did you know that scrapbooking is used with patients to help remember past events in their lives, people from their past and present and to assist the care givers with info into the patients lives as a means to communicate with the patient, to understand where they are coming from?

Photographs from the past allow patients to reminisce about pleasant times in their lives. Photographs from the present help patients relate to their current situation. The patient experiencing memory loss is able to remember or recognize someone they love and know in a world where so many things are now unfamiliar to them.

With assistance, patients with Alzheimer’s disease can create scrapbook photo albums. Creating an album is a meaningful activity. The patients identified each other, had a starting point for further discussion, and generally found the albums relaxing.  Some Alzheimer’s patients use a camera and journal to chronicle and remember events. This activity helped those patients track and review their daily lives.

Studies have shown that scrapbook photo albums can be an important part of a patients therapy. In doing so, they will preserve the past, enrich the present and inspire hope for the future.