Digital Scrapbook for Dementia

Here it is, the middle of the night, and I can't sleep, my mind is going round and round about how I might help to build a scrapbook for my friend, Sally, who has Alzheimer's Disease. The other day, I brought my pooch Daisy over for a visit, and wow did that open up the lines of communication. At one point, Sally held Daisy's face up to her own and said "I love you. I love you. I love you" over and over. As nice as it was that Daisy was able to help Sally express her love, I wondered how we could find a way for her to say "I love you" to her own grandchildren, in the midst of fading memory.

Thinking of some sort of scrapbook, I started to search, finding an article, What worked for me, in the UK Times Online by Said Dajani, media manager for the UK's Alzheimer’s Society. Dajani came up with the idea of a digital DVD scrapbook to collect photos, videos and music for people with dementia and their caregivers, an idea that won a Microsoft DesignIT competition, including £15,000 for development work and access to Microsoft’s web developers. Dajani says "Reminiscence therapy is an established technique designed to help people with dementia by stimulating memories through activities and conversation."

Dajani and his group has already conducted focus groups with people with dementia and their caregivers and found that both groups liked the idea of family members populating the scrapbook, exporting it to DVD, and then showing the DVD to care home staff, to help staff gain an understanding of the person behind the condition.

They plan to use existing websites such as Facebook and Flickr to gather content. They also need to work out a way to include music, which is so helpful in the recollection of memories.

"The scrapbook idea is dear to my heart,” says Bruce Bovill, whose wife Janice has dementia. When Janice moved into a care home in 2001, Bovill plastered the walls of her room with photos of their life together. “I did it mostly for me,” he says. But he believes that it has affected the way staff care for his wife.

Bovill says that professional caregivers will be one of the main groups to benefit from the digital scrapbook. He says “They see people at the worst stages of their illness,” Instead of seeing people for their sometimes strange behaviours, the scrapbook would “engineer a change in the way you see them”. He says that the scrapbook would need to be easy to use as potential users could range from grandchildren to elderly spouses. He says he is "keen to test it out."

"Scrapbooks and memory boxes have been in use and promoted by us for a number of years." writes Sharon Edens, Nottingham, UK. "They can improve the quality of life for those living with dementia and their caregivers and families."

With a scrapbook, families can do more than come and sit; they can use the photos and memories to stimulate conversation. Although it may appear to be a one-sided conversation, it really does improve the quality of life for the person with dementia. She says "memory boxes can be as small as a shoe box or as big as a you want, as long as those items within are significant to the person living with the dementia and stimulate communication."