Castlemaine artist helps Simkin House Alzheimer patients with visual prompts

At the end of 2021, Castlemaine artist Terry Jarvis completed two murals in the residence, designed to help patients connect with their pasts using visual prompts.

Nurse unit manager Annie Christopher said the residents in the house were largely psycho-geriatric dementia patients who displayed severe behavioural issues.

"They all have either aggression, severe aggression or depression," she said.

However, the house has had a two year partnership Dementia Australia in order to tackle some of the residents behavioural issues.

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Dementia Australia recommended the house implement what they call 'deviation strategies'.

"They recommended something that could stimulate their mind and deviate their mood when they are aggressive," Ms Christopher said.

"So we contacted Terry Jarvis, and discussed our needs and he came up with some good ideas."

Ms Christopher said many of the female residents enjoyed talking about children and babies, so Mr Jarvis painted a nursery mural.

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"He painted a mural of a nursery corner, with dolls and babies," she said.

"And the women are really enjoying it - when they're aggressive it calms them down or when they don't want to eat we can take them in there."

After the success of the nursery wall, staff at Simkin House wanted to emulate something for the male residents.

"When we looked back at the history of the male residents, they were mostly farmers, gardeners and tradies," she said.

"They really seemed to enjoy that Australian rural landscape."

With some resident history in his back pocket, Mr Jarvis painted another mural in the house.

"It's a big mural split into four sections," Ms Christopher said, "it's got a train station, an old farm, and a big beautiful garden with some animals."

"When he was doing the painting all the male residents were standing with him chatting to him like a friend, giving him advice on what to draw."

Ms Christopher said the mural has been a huge success in deviating the male residents' behaviour.

"It's really working well," she said, "they all love to come out and touch the mural and point out that they had similar farms or gardens."

"Then they start describing different types of flowers and plants."

Ms Christopher since the mural has been in place the incidents of aggression in the home have reduced dramatically.

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"When residents are really low or aggressive, the staff just invite them to go for a walk to the mural and get them talking about their old memories," she said.

"The incident rate is really low now as a result.

"If we get a new resident, they are all really excited to show them and explain to them what's on the mural."

Families of the residents have been overwhelmingly supportive of the deviation strategies, telling staff that they've seen massive improvements in their family members.

"They all love it, they love seeing them reconnect with their past."

"And then the family members will come and tell us some more background history on the residents, we love that."

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