Better Understanding Dementia on Orlando Medical News

Better Understanding Dementia

By: LYNNE JETER

Posted: Monday, October 10, 2011 3:43 pm

Better Understanding Dementia | Naomi Feil, Validation Therapy, Alzheimer’s & Dementia Resource Center, ADRC, Caregiver Conference, Lynne Jeter.

ADRC’s annual caregiver conference highlights dementia care pioneer Naomi Feil

WINTER PARK—When brain deterioration causes loss of social controls, strong emotions that have been suppressed for a life time erupt, leading quite elderly people to enter a “Resolution Struggle,” in which they struggle to express these emotions, previews Naomi Feil, a highly regarded pioneer in dementia care who developed Validation Therapy.

Feil will be headlining the Alzheimer’s & Dementia Resource Center’s (ADRC) annual Caregiver Conference, to be held from 8:30 a.m. to 4 p.m. on Saturday, Nov. 5, at Winter Park Towers in Winter Park. ADRC, an Orlando-based nonprofit, also serves as a Florida Brain Bank coordinator for 20 Florida counties.

The conference will include educational training on Validation Therapy—one of the most widely accepted and preferred methods of communication and understanding for those suffering from dementia or Alzheimer’s disease— and a discussion of techniques and information on additional resources available to caregivers.

“Behavior in very old age is a combination of physical, social and psychological factors,” said Feil.

Born in Munich in 1932, Naomi Feil literally grew up with the elderly. Her father was the administrator for the Montefiore Home for the Aged in Cleveland, Ohio, and her mother led the Social Service Department. After earning a master’s degree in social work from Columbia University, Feil embarked on a career working professionally with the elderly.

Between 1963 and 1980, Feil developed Validation as a response to her dissatisfaction with traditional methods of working with the severely disoriented elders who were her clients. In 1982, she published her first book, Validation: The Feil Method, and revised it a decade later. Her second book, The Validation Breakthrough, was published in 1993, and updated and revised in 2002.

Feil and her husband, Edward, have made many films and videos about aging and Validation Therapy. Executive director of the Validation Training Institute, Feil is a highly-requested speaker worldwide. Since 1989, she has toured Europe three times annually, offering workshops in Validation Therapy to participants in Germany, the Netherlands, Scandinavia, France, Belgium, Italy, Great Britain, and Austria. Her books have been translated into French, Dutch, German, Italian, Finnish, Danish, Swedish, Spanish and Japanese.

People diagnosed with a dementia, failing vision, hearing loss, and mobility challenges often return to the past, using the mind's eye, she explained.

“They sometimes return to the past to re-live pleasant memories, to feel safe, to restore people from the past to resolve old issues in order to die in peace,” she said. “The Validation Worker respects these old people and listens with empathy.”

There are 15 Validation helping methods for listening with empathy, Feil noted.

“Some of these helping methods are verbal for the ‘maloriented and time confused’ person who can talk, and non-verbal techniques for people in ‘repetitive motion’ who can no longer talk,” she explained.

Feil shared a few additional tidbits:

“The Validation worker never lies to an old person,” she said. “Human beings operate on many levels of awareness. On a deep level, the very old person who seeks their mother or demands to go home knows that their parents are dead or that they can no longer go home. Very old people often use symbols to express emotions—people or objects in present time to substitute for people from the past.”
Validation cannot cure the very old person, but does restore dignity, reduce burn-out for the caregiver, increase verbal behaviors, help families relate, reduce the need for tranquilizing medications, and prevent inward withdrawal, she said.

“The medical community can accept the physical losses that occur in old age, and the psychological need to restore the past and listen with empathy,” said Feil. “I’m not a physician, but I’ve found that medications often inhibit the very old person from expressing their emotions, and don’t help restore mental functioning.”

The morning session for professional caregivers runs from 8:30 a.m. to 11:30 a.m.; the afternoon session for family caregivers runs from 12:30 to 4 p.m. Pre-registration is recommended by Oct. 28. Session cost $25 each, plus $10 for every additional family member to attend. For more information, view www.vfvalidation.org.