Using Sign Language to Assist Elderly People with Dementia
The issues that older people with dementia typically have are well known and, increasingly, Japanese services are catering for these needs and supporting older people who have dementia who have lost a number of life skills.
Our Group Home Mizusawa COSMOS service had one specific client with dementia who was deaf and dumb. Her only means of communication was sign language. In this paper we are describing how we dealt with this issue and handled her dementia,her communication and improved the quality of her life.
When we first met this woman she was 87 years of age. She had been deaf and dumb since she was three years of age and had used sign language since she had been six. In 1989 she had had a heart pacemaker implanted and she finally died in 2002 of ovarian cancer.
Her care was covered by Japanese long term care insurance system. She did not understand the time; she had short-term memory loss and she was incontinent at night.
She was a teacher of sign language in the community and her interests included knitting, patchwork and rattan work.
At COSMOS she taught staff and others in the service how to communicate using sign language and, over time, she regained her abilities while staff learnt new ones.
When kindergarten children came to our Group Home, this woman taught several words of sign language to children. Once again, this lady was using sign language to overcome her multiple disabilities.
GH COSMOS in Mizusawa in Northern Honshu opened in April 2000. We have 9 people with dementia in a small domestic environment, each with small individual rooms. The environment is designed to promote dignity and improve their quality of life with the 5 concepts for better care of elderly with dementia presented by Takayanagi1).
We sought to offer her dignity at the Group Home and assist her to maintain her existing skills and gain others. But, in order to do this, we needed to learn sign language ourselves to make that possible.
This paper seeks to show how we this occurred.
Reference:
1) Takayanagi, K.: Concepts and environment for healing; Journal of Japan Society of Healing Environment, Vol.5,No.1,p27-33,2000.