Caregivers' Meeting - Sharing of Caregiver's experience - a group session
Topic: Sharing of caregiver's experiences- a group therapy session
Facilitator: Ms Divya Raj Gollahalli, neuropsychologist
Ms Amulya Rajan, neuropsycholgoist
Date: 27th JUNE 2015
Place: ARDSI Activity Centre, Plot No-451, Road No-86, Jubilee Hills, Hyderabad
Time: 11-1pm
- The meeting commenced at 11am and was attended by 30 people constituting caregivers, volunteers and ARDSI and Memory Clinic staff.
- Ms. Divya began the session with asking caregivers to share their experiences of caregiving.
- Different caregivers shared the history of their loved ones and their journey through the course of the disease.
- Ms Amulya then asked caregivers to speak about their experiences in this process and the challenges they faced.
- Caregivers spoke about different emotional, social, financial and physical challenges they faced. They spoke of various ways to deal with these challenges by hiring help to reduce their burden, by continuing to remain social and keep patients social, by seeking advice from trained professionals, by communicating with family members and friends about the disease, to be a part of a community such as ARDSI Hyderabad Deccan in order to have a working support system, and lastly the importance of finding ways of keeping the patients active like by bringing them to the activity centre regularly.
- Experienced caregivers were able to provide information on the different facets of dementia to caregivers who were relatively new.
- The caregivers were thanked by the facilitators for the generous sharing of their experiences and the tips sounded by them to the group.
