Alzheimer’s is a chronic neurodegenerative disease that afflicts 6 percent of those over the age of 65. It is characterishort-termrt term memory loss, loss of language facility, disorientation, mood swings, loss of motivation and a poor prognosis.
Life expectancy is three-nine years after initial diagnosis. Some 60 percent to 70 percent of dementia cases are due to Alzheimer’s and this disease takes a huge toll on the caregivers socially, psychologically and economically.
The cause of this illness is multifactorial. Genetics accounts for about 70 percent of the cases but other risk factors include head injury, depression, gum disease, air pollution, obesity, smoking and hypertension.
Onset is gradual and diagnosis is made with the help of the Mini-Mental Status Exam, imaging and blood work.
Although drug treatment has proved to be largely ineffective there are interventions that have been helpful. These include an emphasis on lifestyle changes to include more reading, cross words puzzles, increase in exercise or sports participation, more socializing and the use of coffee.
All these activities activate brain segments which delay the onset and progress of the disease. Stimulation with art, music or pets is recommended. Psychological interventions include basic supportive psychotherapy, meditation and Reminiscence Therapy.
Reminiscence Therapy is using discussions and photos from the past to stimulate the patient’s memory.
Perhaps the best demonstration of the use of this type of intervention was seen in the hit “The Notebook” starring Ryan Gosling and Rachel McAdams. The plot of the film is based around the character of an elderly James Garner reading a love story to his wife who is stricken by Alzheimer’s and therefore no longer recognizes him as her loving husband.
She thinks he’s just a nice a man who likes to read her a story out of his notebook.
The story he reads is about how two teenagers once met at a carnival and fell in love. The love story he reads is plagued with problems since the boy played by Ryan Gosling is from a poor family and his love interest Rachel McAdams is from a well to do family who are trying to end the relationship.
Although it was not reviewed well when it first came out this film is now widely considered to be one of the great romantic love stories in film history.
For our purposes it demonstrates power of reminiscence therapy by showing how a person can retrieve memory for the past when given the correct approach. The film is heart rending because it shows how temporary the woman’s grasp on reality can be but still it provides us hope.
The other great film about Alzheimer’s and one which garnered 10 Academy Award nominations was “On Golden Pond” made in 1981.
It starred Henry Fonda, Katharine Hepburn and Jane Fonda and both Fonda and Hepburn won Oscars for their role as an elderly couple facing the grim reality of the first stage of Alzheimer’s.
There is a fact that connects these two great films. The Notebook was directed by Nick Cassavetes who placed his mother Gena Rowlands in the starring role. “On Golden Pond” was initially a Broadway play and Jane Fonda bought the rights of the play in order to make it into a film which her father Henry Fonda could star in.
The family intimacy and love that one feels in both these superb films was partly based upon the real human love that was part of the principals involved.
And there is one other thing that makes these films seem so moving.
Most great pieces of art are founded upon extreme pain that is faced by the artist and overcome through the making of the artwork. And when that particular artistic triumph relates to the populations shared pain then you have a hit on your hands. Who among us has not experienced a parent who has slipped into gradual decline and death?
If it has not happened to you yet it will soon enough.
I recall my father when he was in his nineties calling me up from his home in Florida and asking me outlandish questions like who was the Boston Red Sox second basement in 1965.
Or who was the big Detroit Tigers reliever in 1958? He was really nervous about all that because he had a fear that his memory was slipping away.
Now in his case this couldn’t be further from the truth because when I would visit him I would see all the lists he made with literally thousands of names of big league players from each team, which position they played and what their batting average was.
That story demonstrated two things. It shows that we cherish memory a great deal and that we can fool ourselves into thinking we have dementia when in fact we do not.
Our brains are designed to forget about 90 percent of input within 18 seconds. If not for this our minds would become hopelessly jumbled up.
“The Mind of a Mnemonist” by the Russian psychologist A.R. Luria is the story of a man who could not forget anything at all and that this incapacitated him in every way.
Alzheimer’s is a dreadful disease that wreaks havoc on too many families but we at least can find some solace in a few great films that address this illness and show us ways to overcome the suffering.
If you have someone in your family that has dementia and you need to find some hope go watch those two movies. I promise you will shed some tears but feel better in the end.
