How to make a Memory Book for Dementia and Alzheimer's Patients

It's been proven that people with severe memory loss, dementia or Alzheimer's will function better if they are reminded of their lives and those of their loved ones. So how do you help YOUR mother remember her life? This page will help you make her memory book as helpful as possible.

Supplies needed

• Either a physical book to put the pictures and descriptions in, or a digital system of some sort.
  
• Pictures of each family member
• Pictures of the main life events

Facts needed

• Birth date, birth place, name, occupation and location of each person still living.
  
• Date of death on people that have already died
• Main life facts of your parent: birth, school history, job history, marriage date etc.
  

Make sure your pictures have large faces. In fact, large pictures are a plus. Don't feel stupid about filling a page mostly with a picture. Not only do old people generally have problems seeing, people with dementia also usually have trouble recognizing people. Having large pictures, or pictures mostly of a face, will help them see the details they need to recognize what it's about.

Choose pictures that have a symbolic component. If your father was a painter, a picture of him painting would be good. In fact, a picture of anybody painting would still be a good reminder of what he use to do. Similarly: pictures of marriage, baptism, graduation etc. will help spark memories.

EACH picture needs to have a caption with the people who are on it. Don't say, if the page is about Janeth, 'with friend Roberta'. Instead say 'Janeth with friend Roberta'.

The reason is that it is hard for people with alzheimer's (or any other kind of memory problem) to connect the dots. They will not automatically know that all the pictures on that page are about the same person. They will certainly not know that several pages are about the same person.

Start with short factual statements about the people in the pictures. Something like:

• Janeth was born in may 1993 in Chicago.
• Janeth she went to school in Baltimore. Janeth loves soccer and ballet.
  

It's tempting to write a long story, or choose a funny picture. DO NOT do either. Or if you can't resist, start with the main facts first and make sure you have at least one picture with just a face or important event.

Long stories are nice, of your parent can still read them. If they can, reading out loud is a good idea: that way the story can be a conversation starter.

In general though - short facts are better. They are the answer to many questions they might have and will help the caregivers answer questions as well. It's hard on nurses to have to look up the fact that brother Charles was a navy man in the middle of a long story. Far more helpful to have a bullet point with his picture 'Brother charles, birth june 1900, death 1983, occupation navy man'.

Remember: the mind of an Alzheimer's patient is constantly getting worse: practice may help them keep some of the important facts straight longer, but you should not make things more complicated than necessary.

If you do it right, a memory book can help a patient enjoy remembering their own past. My grandmother loves to hear me tell her what her kids are up to. However, she can no longer understand long sentences, so I have to keep things simple.

• name
• birthday (day, month, year, place)
• name and occupation of your parent's grandparents and great grandparents
• brothers and sisters (names, birthdays, occupations)
• details on mom and dad
• What they liked to do when they were little?
• Where was their first home? Where else did they live?
• First school, education later on, favorite subject
• Work they did
• Favorite clothing
• Wedding date, memories of that day
• Details on in laws
• Important events in their life
• General health information
• Hobbies
• Musical taste
• Food favorites
• Religion / spirituality
• Pets
• Friends
• Travel stories

You don't have to have information about all of these. Just fill in those that are relevant to your parent. Include pictures where you can.

Making a memory book is only the first step. Having family, friends and care takers refer to it regularly is as important: only then does it help your loved one keep the main facts in mind.

However, remember that nothing can stop the progression of alzheimer's and most other kinds of dementia. The best one can hope is that using the memory book will help the patient use their remaining mental faculties as well as possible.

These days I have an iPad, and one of the things that's great about it is that I've uploaded all my personal pictures on it. And I share them with my grandmother.

The images are nice and big, and I can zoom when it's still too small for my grandmother's declining eye-sight.

It's really the easiest way to remind your loved one of their past: just scan the images and syncronize that folder with your iPad photos.

The only disadvantage of this method is that you don't get to remind yourself of who the people in the pictures were / are. This is a real drawback when looking at pictures of my grandmother's siblings: most of whom I never met.

A more advanced method is to create a PDF with the images embedded in them. You get the same zooming features, but still have text to remind yourself of the facts.