Transcript
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[Title card animation: Dementia Australia Research Foundation - Care]
[Dr Sandra Garrido, Western Sydney University]
Dr Sandra: My name is Sandra Garrido. I'm the senior lecturer in the School of Psychology and the Marks Institute for Brain Behaviour and Development at Western Sydney University. We tend to think of dementia as being just memory problems, but actually, agitation, depression, anxiety are all very common in people with dementia. There's a lot of evidence out there that music can really help people experiencing those changes in mood and behaviour, particularly agitation, which is one of the really big challenges that people face, especially in a residential age care setting.
Myself and my team, we received funding from the Dementia Australia Research Foundation to transform some of the guidelines that we developed into online training for aged care staff. Our research has demonstrated that, often, staff in age care facilities are just thinking about music as being entertainment, and they're not thinking about how they can actually use it strategically to help support people experiencing some of those changes to mood and behaviour.
It's really important that caregivers have an awareness of that so that they can incorporate those sorts of ideas into music programs that they're developing for people they care for. We respond to music on two different levels. One is the physical level, and so, that's the way our physiological systems like our breathing and our heart rate, even the way our neurons fire, all synchronise to an external beat. And the second is a cognitive layer, which relates to our memories and our thoughts, and extracting meaning from the lyrics of the music.
The funding we received from the Dementia Australia Research Foundation enabled us to collaborate really closely with the Dementia Centre HammondCare to develop the online training program. The training course has got different modules for people depending on their role in aged care, and it also has a module for home-based carers and family members as well. And basically, what the training does is it takes caregivers through a six-step process where they learn to identify the potential for negative responses in people with dementia. They learn how to target the music they're selecting to the particular symptoms that they're trying to support, and then they learn how to integrate that into the overall care plan for the individual.
We'd love to see this training in use by people caring for someone with dementia across the country and even internationally, both in age care facilities and people caring for someone with dementia at home. And we hope that it would give people caring for someone with dementia new ways to support those individuals, and to improve their quality of life without being so reliant on medication.
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This research is supported by:
The Hazel Hawke Research Grant in Dementia Care
The Dementia Care, HammondCare
Western Sydney University
Dr Garrido would like to acknowledge the research team:
Professor Deborah Hatcher, Holly Markwell and Colm Cunningham
We thank the Hazel Hawke Alzheimer’s Research and Care Fund,
and the family of Hazel Hawke AO, for their ongoing support.
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[Title card]
Dementia Australia Research Foundation:
A cure is just the beginning
If you would like to see dementia research make real impact, donate today:
1300 636 679
www.dementia.org.au/donate-research
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