West Lothian Courier

Artistic approach to helping patients

Tippethill’s mural

- Debbie Hall

A talented artist has been tasked with creating an eye catching mural for dementia patients at Tippethill Hospital.

Tess Glen, a third year student from Edinburgh College of Art, has been commission­ed to make the wall painting which has been specially designed for the dementia ward at the hospital.

The project was the idea of registered mental health nurse Debbie Robertson who believed the artwork would help to calm down her patients.

Debbie works on the ward with elderly women with challengin­g behaviour brought on by dementia. She contacted Edinburgh College of Art looking for a student artist to create a mural to bring calm to a particular­ly frenetic ward. She says the mural has already calmed some of the patients down.

Debbie said: “It’s beautiful. It’s already made such a difference to the ward. Before there were just bare, yellow walls that weren’t very appealing. Now it looks a lot less like a hospital and more like a home, which is what it is for our patients. The room has always been called the garden room, as it leads out into the garden. Now, for the first time, it is starting to live up to its name.”

Tess was chosen for her approach to bringing plants to life as paintings. This was designed in the context of recent research on memory and dementia which suggests that this approach can act as a communicat­ive bridge to patients.

She said: “It’s been a really interestin­g project to work on. When I spoke to the nurses they told me that some of the patients could get quite frantic and pace the ward.

“To slow people down I decided to do something intricate, colourful and eye- catching. A lot of the patients used to be keen gardeners, so that’s why I decided upon the paintings of flowers. I hope they manage to remind the patients of something familiar and help soothe them.”

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