A creative outlet
Amazing Place aims to stimulate and invigorate the minds of people with dementia
At Amazing Place — a nonprofit that aims to give people suffering from dementia a place to feel comfortable and engaged — invigorating brains is on the minds of staff members.
There are card and domino games for people to play, classes and seminars to attend, and book clubs to participate in. Even the meals are made with a focus on brain health.
“We do red meat once a month, and there’s fresh veggies, fresh fish, fresh chicken more often,” said Michael Lieb, the chef who cooks the lunches at Amazing Place. “Anything but salt — sodium is very bad for the memory. We’ve got a total program here.”
The faith-based nonprofit, which a St. Luke’s Methodist Church pastor started in 1996, is Houston’s only day center for people with mild to moderate forms of dementia. Family members drop off the organization’s clients — referred to as “participants” at Amazing Place — in the morning and pick them up later in the afternoon, after more than eight hours of activities designed to keep people occupied and interested.
“If I didn’t like it, I wouldn’t look forward to spending time here,” Sidney Buchanan, a participant at Amazing Place, said matter-of-factly during a recent bridge game. “No one has to come if they don’t want to, but we do, so it must be a good thing.”
Volunteers on that day, some of them dealing cards and others keeping score, could also be found helping to lead a Bible study and cleaning up after lunch. Chairs were being set out for a class that would take place later, and some people were sitting in a common area reading books. Television, which Amazing Place marketing director Suzy LaForge said can be a negative element in dementia patients’ lives, isn’t encouraged.
“That’s one of the things we hear the most — that someone will be at home alone all day watching TV for hours,” she said. “Here, we like to make sure people are talking to each other and learning. They have choices.”
This is illustrated in Buchanan’s schedule, which is quite different than it was before he started attending Amazing Place about two years ago, said his wife, Nell Richardson.
When Buchanan, 75, first started showing signs of mild cognition impairment in 2011, Richardson said her husband’s ability to deal with day-to-day activities began to suffer. A retired law professor at University of Houston, Buchanan was accustomed to a certain level of intellectual stimulation, Richardson said. But his condition changed that.
“It just became clear that his judgment and ability to make decisions was becoming impaired,” she said. “He couldn’t really live independently. He had a hard time entertaining himself.”
Richardson, 65, heard about Amazing Place through her church, and she said that after Buchanan began attending, the couple’s outlook about Buchanan’s condition changed. Buchanan made friends at Amazing Place, and he enjoyed going every day. His new schedule was helpful for her, too.
“It’s a big respite for the caregiver,” she said. “It’s a strain to be responsible for someone who’s not responsible for themselves anymore. All the things you can split up in a normal couple situation — bills, errands, appointments — fall onto one person. Even planning activities to keep him engaged, now that happens at Amazing Place.”
Niki Herd, a poetry doctoral student in the University of Houston’s creative writing program, is part of that. Herd, who leads a weekly memoir and fiction writing class at Amazing Place, said the writing prompts she gives participants provides an outlet to exercise their memory and creativity.
For example, on Tuesday she passed out notecards and told attendees to write down a secret. Then everyone turned their cards in and she gave them out again randomly, instructing everyone to write a story that began with the secret they had just received.
“They’re usually very simple prompts — something like ‘write about your favorite thing you did in high school’ — because I don’t want anyone to get flustered,” she said. “We spend about 15 or 20 minutes writing and then everyone is always very eager to read their stories out loud afterward.”
Tracey Brown, executive director at Amazing Place, said the writing class, as well as other programming like speaking events, field trips and activities such as a new ballroom dancing class, help to add excitement and activity to participants’ lives. It’s a common misconception that people with dementia don’t have the ability to enjoy life or to be enriched, she said. Amazing Place is set up to dispel that notion.
“People with dementia enjoy being challenged just like anyone,” she said. “Sometimes people forget that.”