Question from an Alzheimer’s Notes Reader
August 8, 2008 by Mary Emma Allen
Filed under Diseases & Conditions
Periodically I receive questions from readers. I find that readers with experience in different aspects of Alzheimer’s research and caregiving may have the answers.
Here is a question from Kathy. It’s an interesting one:
I heard that you should not wear white when dealing with Alzheimer’s patients as they have a tough time distinguishing your outline and may perceive a visitor at first glance as only a head without a body. Is this true?
If anyone has an answer for Kathy, do leave a comment!
(Amazon image)
(c)2008 Mary Emma Allen
hi Kathy,
I noticed your question about wearing the color white.
I had something interesting happen when I was testing my prototype Memory Activities cards and puzzles at a Memory Treatment Center.
Florence, one of my favorite residents is in her 90’s and extremely sharp. It was unbelievable how detail oriented she was working with the puzzles. Then we started playing with the cards.
She was matching one of the images called 100th AN of Baseball by Norman Rockwell; the colors are red, black and white (a lot of outlined white).
She was examining this particular card very closely and said she couldn’t see it very well.
The activity director then informed me she was blind in one eye and had poor vision in the other.
I was totally shocked, up to that point I would have never known she had any vision problems, but we were working on puzzles that were 6×8” with large images.
I asked her to show me what she was looking at and she pointed to the only color she could see on the card and it was black, she called it the shadow.
There were two images on that card the shadow or black, that was the umpire and smallest image. The largest image was the ball player whose colors were mostly white with bits of red and black, and she couldn’t see him.
These prototype cards were regular playing card size.
After this testing I decided my cards would be to oversized 3.5×5″ and the images are as large as I can make them and I’m always checking the colors.
It was a great experience for me.
Some colors if they are in the same tonal range could easily blend together for someone with poor vision, not necessarily Alzheimer’s or Dementia patients but anyone.
When preparing projects I make sure there is contrast in the colors and they aren’t all the same tone.
If it is a light shade with no outline, they may not see any of it, except in your case the head. And, if it is all dark tones it may be just one big blob, which can be scary also.
karen@memoryjoggingpuzzles.com
http://www.memoryjoggingpuzzles.com