Psychiatrist Robert Butler created a long-term care remedy called reminiscence therapy in 1963, which has evolved with the emergence of new technologies. Reminiscence therapy is particularly beneficial for patients with dementia and Alzheimer’s. But what is it?

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What This Article Covers

• What Is Reminiscence Therapy?
• Who Can Benefit?
• Types
• How It Works
• Activities
• Primary Benefits
• Next Steps

What Is Reminiscence Therapy?

Reminiscence therapy is a mental treatment process that evokes memories of past experiences and life events in patients. Therapists administer this intervention to brain-injured patients and people suffering from depression, dementia and Alzheimer’s.

The primary purpose of reminiscence therapy is to help a person retrieve and reconnect with memories. It’s a non-pharmacological intervention that helps patients (mostly elderly) feel a sense of fulfillment and calm by recalling past experiences.

It has roots in geriatric psychiatry and aims at helping elderly patients revisit positive experiences to help reduce stress, agitation and challenging behavior. Therapists mostly conduct reminiscence therapy in environments familiar to patients such as their residences or workplaces.

Who Can Benefit?

While reminiscence therapy can be beneficial for various ages and cognitive complications, it’s most commonly used to treat elderly adults.

The Canadian Institute for Health Information reviewed data from the Commonwealth Fund’s International Health Policy Survey of Older Adults. The review compiles data on depression in older populations, specifically ages 65 or older, for 11 different countries.

It found that 20% of older adults in the U.S. reported being diagnosed with depression, with the next highest countries reporting 13% of older adults reporting depression diagnoses.

With the prevalence of depression and other mental diseases, especially in older populations, health care clinics are adopting reminiscence therapy to improve patient outcomes. This therapy evokes sensations in all the primary senses — sight, touch, taste, smell and sound.

It involves tapping into memories and events in a patient’s life. A person with dementia or Alzheimer’s often forgets past life events or even relatives. Reminiscence therapy can provide the right triggers to help recover lost events.

It has been found that this therapy has the most effect in the middle and early phases of memory loss. And while it may be less effective in later stages, it can still offer some relief.

To trigger memories, therapists use certain objects such as a unique photograph, special music or smells to jog up a patient’s memory attached to the particular stimulant. The sensory input can trigger a memory, helping the patient recall a fond incident or feeling associated with the stimulant.

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Types

Reminiscence therapy is popular in senior care facilities. While there’s no fixed pattern or method of this therapy, psychologists have established two popular and effective general approaches.

Integrative Reminiscence Therapy

Integrative reminiscence therapy deals with patients who can’t reconcile past conflicts. The treatment helps them revisit memories and resolve conflict by differentiating between ideal and reality.

This form of therapy helps individuals review their beliefs by confronting negative realities. Often, people with depression may have a twisted memory of past events, usually with a particularly negative view of themselves. However, reminiscence therapy tries to uncover the real moments and help patients make peace with past occurrences.

Instrumental Reminiscence Therapy

Instrumental reminiscence therapy taps into the brain’s coping mechanisms and survival strategies. A patient undergoing this therapy can retrieve past coping mechanisms and survival instincts that they used to achieve a goal or solve a difficult situation.

Instrumental reminiscence therapy mostly fills an individual with pride and self-confidence, as it retrieves experiences in which they acted efficiently to achieve a desired result. This helps patients regain their spirit and invest their grit in goals more aligned with current living conditions.

How It Works

While some might mistake reminiscence therapy for just talk therapy, the reality is that it requires more. It aims at stimulating the senses of elderly patients suffering from cognitive disabilities.

Reminiscence therapy requires both the therapist and the patient to engage actively. The patient’s senses, such as smell, touch and feel, are effectively used to bring back old sensations connected to a particular memory.

Basically, it activates the primary senses in a memory loss patient to trigger the brain to recollect memories. For example, the smell of a lover’s perfume or the sight of their belongings can trigger memories associated with the person.

With reminiscence therapy, patients can retrieve many past memories, meaning there’s a slight possibility that the individual will also have to relive unfavorable memories and events from life. You have to prepare patients for the possibility of unfavorable experiences.

The therapy is a hands-on approach that includes the use of props. It targets certain portions of the brain that deal with cognition and long-term memory. Props, such as music and things with a definite smell, such as flowers, stimulate the memories stored in the brain.

When it comes to conversation, you should aim at open-ended questions rather than yes/no ones. If you’re in conversation with someone in the midst of reminiscence therapy, be prepared to have a non-judgemental mindset as sudden changes will occur once the patient starts recalling past memories.

As a result, memories from the past come flooding in, and the person becomes overwhelmed with new emotions. Professionals have seen that reminiscence therapy increases the regular engagement of a patient.

While much of reminiscence therapy relies on physical triggers, there are certain technologies that play a role in administering and recording treatment today.

For example, you can use virtual reality to help patients visit locations associated with fond memories — places they may not be able to physically visit anymore.

And medical software, such as long-term care solutions, EMR tools and EHR systems, let you record and access patient information from anywhere, whether that’s at an LTC facility or a patient’s home.

With recent technologies and new-age practices, we expect reminiscence therapy will continue to develop in the future, continuously changing how it works.

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Activities

There are various activities that can help patients with dementia and Alzheimer’s recover positive memories.

Music, smells and possessions from the past are particularly useful to jog memories. While this is by no means an exhaustive list of reminiscence therapy activities, here are some common ones:

• Listen to Music: Human beings tend to attach memories to the music they love. Listening to a favorite song, artist or genre from the past can trigger memories associated with that particular music.
• View Photos & Albums: Pictures or certain objects that once held great value can help in reminiscence therapy. Photos of best mates, family members, co-workers and favorite actors are a good place to start. Photos of personal and professional achievements can also help strike memories.
• Smell & Taste Food: Doesn’t the smell of our favorite dish take us back to the last time we ate it or even to when we were younger? Smelling and tasting food can help jog up a past incident that might have taken place over the table.
• Create Art: Touch is another sensation that can trigger memories. Activities like painting, pottery and other tactile art tasks are often significant to patients with dementia. If a patient no longer has the ability to complete complex art tasks, such as painting, simple crafts for dementia patients can still make a big difference.
• Revisit Locations Virtually: Virtual reality makes visiting a memorable destination possible for elderly patients, when it may not be otherwise. Take patients on an immersive experience of an old park or city where they made memories. Revisiting favorite places may help them tap into an old memory.

You can start patients off various activities — mentioned above or otherwise — and then tailor them more based on what works best for individuals.

Primary Benefits

The benefits of reminiscence therapy on patients suffering from brain diseases such as dementia and Alzheimer’s is immense. These diseases limit a patient’s cognitive abilities, affecting thinking, remembering and reasoning.

It helps patients rediscover past experiences and specific memories. The positive feelings of memories can subsequently reduce the stress and anxiety levels of patients.

It can have a major impact on patients with brain diseases. Let’s look at some of the potential positive outcomes of reminiscence therapy.

Improves Communication Skills

Reminiscence therapy exercises the brain into overdrive to retrieve lost memories. With the flexing of brain muscles, the person can better control cognitive processes and improve focus in recalling memories.

Further, the patient must communicate after the memory retrieval, enhancing the interaction between the patient and whoever’s helping with the activity at the time.

Increases Self-Worth

Reminiscence therapy plays a big part in making seniors feel appreciated and heard. By nature, humans have a need to socialize and share life experiences. And that doesn’t just go away with age.

In reminiscence therapy, patients get a chance to talk about pleasant feelings and happy experiences, boosting their confidence. Therapy clinics often organize roundtable discussions that help patients feel like they’re being heard and part of a collective.

Through the community, seniors can make new friends and develop a sense of camaraderie among the group. This not only helps boost positive feelings but can also reduce depression.

Helps Patients Strengthen Relationships

How many times have we seen our grandparents or an elderly character in a film talking about a time when they were young? Discussing old memories with family and friends often paves the way for better understanding and bonding among family members.

Similarly, patients often retrieve memories about close friends and family members during reminiscence therapy. Having the family present at this point allows patients to better bond with them.

Reduces Symptoms of Depression

One of the most beneficial aspects of reminiscence therapy is its positive effect on mental health. Patients may not only remember past events but also show a considerable reduction in depression levels by addressing experiences in a clinical setting.

It may also help resolve deep buried conflicts and provide a sense of closure. Remembering unfavorable events can often help patients take steps to resolve it.

Improves Quality of Life

Happy memories help give us a positive outlook on life. In old age, people can face numerous diseases that become a reason for constant worrying. Reminiscence therapy helps patients relive past memories that might fill the patients with joy and reduce stress levels.

However, reminiscence therapy can also unearth unpleasant memories, which might have the opposite effect. So it’s important for doctors and patients to address this beforehand and prepare for the possibility. In case of this, try to motivate the patient to talk to family and friends who can help bring up positive memories again.

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Next Steps

Reminiscence therapy is one of the most promising interventions to treat dementia, depression and other mental health diseases. It allows patients to revisit past memories and improve their psychological well-being.

Are you looking for software to enhance your reminiscence therapy services or other long-term care needs?

Take a look at our free long-term care long-term care comparison report to learn more about the top vendors in the market today. You can carry out in-depth research about the products and determine their benefits based on our analysts’ ratings and users’ sentiments.

How does reminiscence therapy help your patients? Let us know in the comments.