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7 Depression Busters for Caregivers
World of Psychology
Nearly one-third of people caring for terminally ill loved ones suffer from depression according to research from Yale University. About one in four family caregivers meet the clinical criteria of anxiety. And a recent study found that 41 percent of former caregivers of a spouse with Alzheimer’s disease or another form of dementia experienced mild to severe depression up to three years after their spouse had died.
Caregivers are so vulnerable to depression because they often sacrifice their own needs while tending to their loved one and because of the constant stress involved. Here, then, are 12 tips to help protect you from anxiety and depression and to guide you toward good mental health as you care for a relative.
via 7 Depression Busters for Caregivers | World of Psychology.
Posted on February 26, 2010 | No Comments | Category: Alzheimer's, Caregiving, Dementia | Tags: caregiver stress, Caregiving, depression, family caregiving
Cleveland Clinic and Cleveland Art Museum team up for Alzheimer’s program
Alzheimer's Reading Room
Two of Cleveland’s biggest institutions — the Cleveland Clinic and the Cleveland Art Museum — are working together to make the museum’s art more accessible to Alzheimer’s and dementia patients. In this post, the Alzheimer’s Reading Room suggests bringing the program to the attention of your local museum or library.
According to Kaye Spector in an article on Cleveland.com, in Alzheimer’s disease, “areas that govern emotion, perception and creativity often remain intact.”Forty tour leaders at the Cleveland Museum of Art are being taught how to tailor tours to patients that have Alzheimer’s disease. These special tours will begin this summer.Physicians in the Cleveland area are being advised to encourage dementia patients and their caregivers to sign up for these tours. Apparently, similar tours are already being offered at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City.
via Alzheimer’s Reading Room: Cleveland Clinic and Cleveland Art Museum Team Up for Alzheimer’s Program.
Posted on February 26, 2010 | No Comments | Category: Alzheimer's, Dementia | Tags: activities, Alzheimer's, art
Alzheimer’s disease: Responding to sundowning
Symptoms of Alzheimers.org
Here’s a good post on Alzheimer’s sundowning. The blogger starts by describing one aspect of sundowning behavior — hallucinating — and then shares a list of tips to try and avoid this often scary symptom of Alzheimer’s. Sundowning behaviors can include wandering, becoming upset or disoriented, and growing suspicious in the late afternoon or early evening.
Coping with my mother’s forgetfulness was easy in the early stages of her dementia. Things changed after she started to hallucinate. I was taking my mother back to her apartment in an assisted living community when she described one of her hallucinations.
“Last night four people came into my apartment and asked to live with me,” she began. “I told them it was my apartment and they couldn’t stay. I could see them clearly and then they slowly disappeared. It took me a while to realize they weren’t real.”
I didn’t want to upset my mother. What should I say? “It’s a good thing you figured that out,” I replied. Mom agreed with me.
via Alzheimer’s Disease: Responding to Sundowning.
Posted on February 25, 2010 | No Comments | Category: Alzheimer's | Tags: Alzheimer's, Caregiving, sundowning
Google SketchUp lets children with autism create
Salt Lake Tribune
Ever since its 2000 debut by two Colorado software designers, SketchUp has been known as a cutting-edge 3D modeling computer program for architects. By pushing a cursor around downloadable objects, designers created two-dimensional scenes that could later be rendered three-dimensional with editing tools.
Today those same innovations are being tested at the University of Utah’s department of Family and Consumer Studies to expand the skills of children with autism spectrum disorders, thanks to a partnership with Google and Universal Creative Studios,
U. Department chair Cheryl Wright said she was cautious of initial claims that autistic children took to the software. By the end of a workshop earlier this month, she was sold.
“One boy walked in and said, ‘I don’t want to draw!’” Wright said. “But by the end, he had all these ideas of what he wanted to create.”
via Google SketchUp lets children with autism create – Salt Lake Tribune.
Posted on February 25, 2010 | No Comments | Category: Autism | Tags: activities, art, children with Autism
Using prompts to teach children with autism
Psychology Today
This Psychology Today post by Bill Ahearn, Ph. D., director of research at the New England Center for Children near Boston discusses the uses of prompts to teach children with autism. As Ahearn writes, prompts take a variety of forms – including spoken, written, pictorial and physical. And, as he notes, this is not a one-prompt-fits-all teaching approach.
Do all children learn with the same teaching procedures?
Using generic teaching procedures leaves all children behind equally.
Simply put no! Though I’m focused here on teaching children with ASDs, it is quite likely that this applies to all children in all settings. It is particularly important when working with individuals with deficits in learning to identify effective techniques for teaching skills that work for that child. Having teaching procedures that are generally effective doesn’t cut it. If we are interested in doing something other than leaving all children behind equally, we will need to catch those deficits in learning and remediate them. There are two important components to this. The first is specifically identifying the skill deficits that exist. Not acquiring a specific skill is not enough to go on. It is also necessary to assess related skills to determine the appropriate starting place. For example, when addressing communicative deficits we typically won’t start teaching a child to label objects before they can, at least at some level, express their wants, needs, and preferences. I’ll tackle assessment more extensively in another post. Secondly, we will need to identify teaching procedures that work.
Many responses are shaped up by the natural consequences that follow behavior however; when there is a skill deficit it is often necessary to prompt the critical responses and explicitly strengthen them. Prompts are usually referred to as stimuli that are effective in promoting the response in the appropriate context. For example, a child th
via Do all children learn with the same teaching procedures? | Psychology Today.
Posted on February 24, 2010 | No Comments | Category: Autism |
Student with Down syndrome wins writing contest about friends with autism
The (Appleton) Post-Crescent
Marcus Christenson has great affection for his buddies across the hall in Room 1128 at Appleton East High School.
While his friends spend much of their day in classes tailored for students with autism, Christenson, 17, who has Down syndrome, takes classes geared more to young people with cognitive delays.
But that doesn’t stop him from keeping tabs on guys like Andy Wussow and Phillip Clark, and looking forward to hanging out with them during lunch hour, taking trips into the community together to places like the YMCA, sledding hills and Fox Cities Stadium and doing the chicken dance with them at dance parties.
And it doesn’t stop him from writing his signature letters, which get delivered to them via his favorite teacher, Carla Roberts, who teaches in both the autism and cognitive disabilities departments.
Posted on February 24, 2010 | No Comments | Category: Autism, Down Syndrome | Tags: Autism, Down Syndrome, school
Dogs and children with autism
The Canadian Press
Seven-year-old Matthew Colombo of Kitchener and his autism assistance dog guide, Cash, are a wicked team.
To start with, both are as cute as a bug so watching the bond gently forming between the pair is heartwarming and affirming.
For Chris Fowler, this bond is critical.
Chris is head trainer for the autism assistance dog guides, part of the Lions Foundation of Canada Dog Guides’ programs where he and his wife, Heather Fowler, apprenticed.
In 1996 the couple launched National Service Dogs, a non-profit organization west of Cambridge that trains dogs for children like Matthew, children with autism.
via TheSpec.com – healthfitness – Dogs guide autistic kids.
Posted on February 23, 2010 | No Comments | Category: Autism | Tags: animals, Autism, Canada, children with Autism
Alzheimer’s caregiver stress: causes and solutions
Fisher Center for Alzheimer's Research Foundation
It’s not surprising that caring for a spouse with Alzheimer’s Disease is stressful. The New York University School of Medicine ’s NYU Spouse-Caregiver Intervention Study is providing information on what exactly leads to that stress and what can reduce it.
There are two important contributors to caregiver stress: lack of social support and caregiver assessment of the patient’s behavior – something that can cause a caregiver to misunderstand their spouse’s actions as intentional, rather than part of their disease.
Read on for how support groups, counseling and education can help reduce caregiver stress.
via Alzheimer’s Research | Alzheimer’s Research on Caregiving.
Posted on February 22, 2010 | 1 Comment | Category: Alzheimer's, Caregiving | Tags: Alzheimer's, caregiver stress
Jackson Brown, Dar Williams and others sing for autism
AllAccess.com
Jackson Brown, Dar Williams, Marshall Crenshaw, Jonatha Brooke and other singer-songwriters will appear on “Songs of the Spectrum” — a new fundraising album of songs about autism.
The songs on the album, which will be released April 6, are collaborations between John O’Neil, a New York Times editor whose 2004 essay about his autistic son was part of a Pulitzer Prize-nominated series, and Jon Fried and Deena Shoshkes of the indie-pop band The Cucumbers.
The the website AllAccess.com:
An impressive collection of singer-songwriters are banding together to support AUTISM AWARENESS MONTH in APRIL through “Songs of the Spectrum,” an album of original songs about autism. The project is being released on TUESDAY, APRIL 6th and the proceeds will benefit SingSOS, a new nonprofit organization formed to enlist the power of music to spread the word about autism.
Artists who have contributed to the project include JACKSON BROWNE, DAR WILLIAMS, MARSHALL CRENSHAW, JONATHA BROOKE, ARI HEST, DAN BERN, RICHARD JULIAN, OLLABELLE, VALERIE CARTER, DON DIXON & MARTI JONES and many others.
via Artists Sing For Autism | AllAccess.com.
Posted on February 19, 2010 | No Comments | Category: Autism | Tags: Autism, celebrities, fundraising, music
For Some Jobs, Asperger’s Syndrome Can Be An Asset
NPR
Statistics on the unemployed have been dominating the news for months.
And while the current portrait of the jobless might seem dire, consider this: According to new data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, less than 20 percent of the disabled population in the country has work.
But Aspiritech, a nonprofit in the suburbs of Chicago, is trying to help improve the job outlook for people with Asperger’s and high-functioning autism.
The company trains people in data entry and computer program testing — skills that come naturally to many with the disorder.
via For Some Jobs, Asperger’s Syndrome Can Be An Asset : NPR.
Posted on February 18, 2010 | No Comments | Category: Autism | Tags: adults with autism, Asperger's, employment