KAUZ-TV: NewsChannel 6 Now | Wichita Falls, TXMulti-Sensory Environment Helps Dementia & Alzheimer's Patients

Multi-Sensory Environment Helps Dementia & Alzheimer's Patients

A Texoma facility is offering a new type of therapy for Alzheimer's and Dementia patients.

It's the only one of it's kind in the area and is designed to enhance the senses while providing a relaxing environment.

Newschannel 6 Lindsey Rogers went to Texoma Christian Care for a look at the new room and find out how it's benefiting residents there.

"Dementia patients have slow loss of ability to communicate with their environment and no one really knows hoe much cognitive processing is going on behind what they are able to communicate," Daniel Green said.

About 100 residents who have Alzheimer's or Dementia live at Texoma Christian Care .

About a month ago administrators installed what is called a Snoezelen Multi-Sensory Environment.

"This helps give them a way to connect with sensory lights and sounds and colors that can help reduce stress and anxiety," Green said.

The room has several different sensory devices and materials.

A patient tries out each one to see which is the most pleasing to them.

"Then see if the resident benefits from the lights being lowered and slowly introduce them to environment and see what they connect with," Green said.

Some residents stay in the room for several minutes and others over an hour.

Green is the admissions and marketing director.  He said it's a different experience for each resident because each has different emotional and physical needs.

"It's a way to give residents tactile objects they can touch or hear. It gives them sensations just to reconnect to the environment because of loss of cognitive control over what they are seeing and hearing," he said.

Green said their director first saw the Snoezelen room and the benefits it's brought their residents at a facility in the metroplex .

They have a handful of residents currently using the room each day and hope to soon expand the new service too all Alzheimer and dementia residents.

"We are hopeful for what this will do for our Alzheimer's and Dementia residents and we want to make it clear this is not a cure but a way to reach them and help them in process they're going through," Green said.

Green said in the future they plan to expand the multi-sensory environment, adding more devices for their residents.

For more information on Snoezelen environments click here.