Do Cognitive and Social Activities Improve Outcomes for Seniors with Dementia?

Individuals with Dementia do benefit from cognitive, social, and physical activities. Care Indeed, the Bay Area’s In-Home Care Provider, compiled a comprehensive guide to beneficial activities for seniors with Alzheimer’s or Dementia.

How Do Cognitive Activities Help Individuals with Dementia?

Activities that stimulate the brain are known as cognitive stimulation. According to a Cochrane Library Study, cognitive stimulation helps those with mild or medium levels of Dementia.

Cognitive stimulation can be thought of as a type of exercise for the mind. Cognitive activities impact verbal skills, language skills, memory, awareness, problem solving, and ability to focus on tasks. Cognitive activities are designed to trigger memories and encourage thinking to slow cognitive decline.

What Are The Best Cognitive Activities for Those with Dementia?

Some of the best cognitive activities are card games, board games, word games, and puzzles. These games require concentration and thinking to play.

Other great cognitive activities are singing, playing an instrument like the piano, listening to music, painting, baking, and cooking. If your senior enjoys video games, a role-play-style video game can be fun and beneficial at the same time.

Are Physical Activities Important to Slow Down Dementia Progress?

Physical activities help seniors with Dementia to retain necessary motor skills. Activities should not be seen as cures, but they may slow the progression of Dementia.

Great physical activities include everyday outdoor pleasures like visiting the park, feeding the ducks or birds, walking, planting flowers, light gardening, or raking the leaves. Indoor physical activities may include light housekeeping, or even as simple an activity as folding washcloths.

Most activities can be done naturally as part of a daily routine. The focus does not need to be on the Dementia itself. This allows the activities to be enjoyable for the individual.

Physical activity does not need to be traditional exercise. Any type of movement is the key.

Individuals with Dementia who are physically active may remain independent longer. In addition to helping motor skills, physical activity also helps cognitive functioning.

How Do Social Activities Help Seniors with Dementia?

Dementia can be isolating. Social activities help people with Dementia to maintain their social identities.

Regularly interacting with others, especially family and friends, helps those with Dementia regulate moods, maintains or may improve memory, and reduces feelings of loneliness, depression, and confusion. Studies indicate social activities are powerful ways for Dementia sufferers to avoid depression and loneliness.

Examples of social activities include dancing, sharing mealtimes, and simply talking. Looking through photo albums, playing games together, walking together, or meeting friends are all social activities most seniors with dementia enjoy.

Necessary Points to Consider When Planning Activities for People with Dementia

Activities must be based on the stage of Dementia your senior is experiencing. Current health must also be taken into account. Even simple tasks and chores around the home can keep an individual with Dementia active and feeling useful.

Plan activities based on your senior’s natural schedule. Often, those with dementia are tired by afternoon. Schedule active times for mornings, and quiet activities for later in the day.

Activities that are too difficult or complex may make the person with Dementia feel incapable or like a failure. It is very important to plan activities to set the senior with Dementia up for success.

Seniors with mild Dementia are able to participate in many activities. Once the Dementia is in the advanced stages, activities will need to be modified for the challenges of Dementia.

Activities must be tailored to the Dementia. This means activities your senior previously enjoyed may no longer be possible or safe. The Dementia individual will benefit most from activities that bring a sense of joy or pleasure.

Activity List Possibilities for Individuals with Dementia:

- Exercise like swimming, yoga, or walking

- Music, singing, playing an instrument. Music is a powerful resource. Many with advanced Dementia can recall events and memories while listening to music.

- If the dementia individual plays an instrument, practicing and playing may bring joy

- Dancing

- Gardening

- Sewing, knitting, crocheting, and embroidery

- Writing and journaling

- Creating a memory box

- Looking at photos - visual stimulation sometimes triggers memories better than verbal.

- Reading or listening to audiobooks

- Playing board games

- Card games

- Doing basic house chores like dusting, folding towels or clothes, and light cleaning

- Beauty treatments like manicures, hand massages, and hairstyling can keep self-esteem high

- Activities of daily living like brushing the hair, cleansing, getting dressed, and brushing teeth

- Visits and time together with family and friends

- Senior events and get-togethers

What Are Some Benefits of Activities for Seniors with Dementia?

- Improve self-esteem

- May slow cognitive decline

- Improve the overall quality of life

- Encourage independence

- Activities help compensate for lost abilities

- Music, dancing, and art help individuals with Dementia express themselves

- Reduce negative social identity and self-imposed isolation

- Social activities help seniors maintain social contacts

Enlist Support for Dementia Activities

As a caregiver, it is important you are supported by family and friends. You may become overwhelmed if you try to do everything yourself.

Support can come in the form of taking over some of the activities so you get a break. Perhaps you could alternate days of care. Maybe having help over the weekend would allow you much-needed time for yourself.

There are other options and services available that help with activities for individuals with Dementia. In the Bay Area, Care Indeed offers a variety of solutions. If you want to spend more time helping your senior with Dementia, CI-GO accomplishes common tasks like running errands so you don’t have to.

CI-Community has options provided by businesses in our Bay Area community that come directly to you. There are many services, including beauty services, active lifestyle services, exercise classes, and more. Explore which would fit your senior’s needs.

Care Indeed Care Bundles offer customizable solutions that can put valuable time back into your day. There are three options to choose from, and each of the three packages includes services like Home Care, Meal Delivery, CI-GO, and access to CI-Community.

The Bay Area’s Care Indeed offers solutions to help you prevent burnout. Supportive services open up more time for planning cognitive, social, and physical activities for the individual with Dementia.

The value of implementing social and cognitive activities into the routine of the senior with Dementia is well worth the investment of time and energy. We’re here to help you. Explore home care and the supportive services at Care Indeed, or call (650) 352-4007 for details.