The Hindu : Tamil Nadu / Chennai News : Dealing with dementia in dignified way

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Saturday, Dec 20, 2008
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Dealing with dementia in dignified way

Special Correspondent

Dignity Foundation to open a day care centre in Chennai

— Photo: S.R.Raghunathan

Considerate: (From left) Sheilu Sreenivasan, founder president of the Dignity Foundation, S.Ve. Shekher, MLA, and K.Radhakrishnan, head of the Foundation’s Chennai Chapter, at an awareness programme on dementia and senior citizens in Chennai.

CHENNAI: Dignity Foundation, an organisation working for the welfare of senior citizens, plans to open a centre to care for older people with dementia in Palavakkam in the first week of January.

“Our survey showed that there are at least 50,000 senior citizens with dementia in Chennai alone,” says K. Radhakrishnan, who heads the Foundation’s Chennai chapter.

The Dignity Dementia Day Care Centre will initially care for 25 to 30 people, and hopes to expand its services soon. Dementia is a disease caused by permanent damage to the brain and results in the loss of memory, cognitive functioning, language skills, a disorientation of time and place, and mood and behavioural changes, said Sheilu Sreenivasan, founder president of the Dignity Foundation.

At an awareness programme held at the Madras Club on Thursday, she explained how the Foundation’s other Dementia Day Care Centres in Mumbai, Kolkata and Bangalore helped patients, as well as their families and caregivers.

Patients are picked up from their homes across the city and cared for throughout the day with games, hobbies, music, opportunities to socialise, animal therapy, physiotherapy and counselling.

They are under the supervision of a trained clinical psychologist.

“Most importantly, we give them reassurance, maintaining their value as persons, giving them constant motivation,” she said, adding that caregivers were also given support to help them manage the stress of looking after a dementia patient. In Chennai, the Centre will be hosted at the premises of Vishranthi, which also runs an old age home. The total cost of running the centre is a little less than Rs.9 lakh per year or Rs.73,000 per month, with the biggest chunk going for transport.

For more details, please call 044-24493165.

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