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Five ways to support someone living with dementia through meaningful music this Christmas
The festive season can be a difficult time for anyone, including people living with dementia, families and carers.
From feelings of disconnectedness and isolation to anxiety and agitation, navigating the bustling holiday season while caring or spending time with someone living with dementia can be overwhelming. But thanks to meaningful music, it doesn’t have to be.
UK music and dementia charity Playlist for Life has been harnessing the power of meaningful music for dementia for a decade, training thousands of health and social care professionals to use music in their care. One care home the charity worked with in Scotland experienced a 60% reduction in use of pharmaceutical drugs after playing personal music for patients with dementia.
One of the many benefits of using music as a tool to manage symptoms of dementia is that it is low cost and can be done almost anywhere. So, if you are spending time with someone living with dementia this December – or at any other time of year – try out these tips for supporting them through meaningful music.
Listen to music together
If you know the person well, you may already have an idea of what kind of music they enjoy. Playing music that is special to the person is crucial as it’s the familiarity and memories the song triggers that help open up conversations, connections and potentially relieve symptoms. Perhaps there’s a song that you have a memory of together or you happen to know what their favourite band is. It may take playing a few different songs to learn which evoke memories or a sense of calm so don’t give up if the first song you play doesn’t have any effect.
Hearing a song from our past can trigger negative emotions as well as positive ones, so keep an eye out for ‘red flag’ songs that trigger unpleasant or unwanted memories. If you notice any negative reactions, stop the music. After comforting the person, you could try another track.
Become a music detective
Now that you have a few songs that have been tried and tested, you can dig a little deeper to uncover more personally meaningful music by using ‘music detective’ skills. These music detective tricks are particularly helpful if you don’t know the person you are supporting well, or want to find even more songs to support someone living with dementia.
The first step is to identify when someone’s ‘memory bump’ took place. The memory bump happens between 10 and 30 years old, and psychologists have highlighted that this is the period when we make the many of our strongest memories. To find songs connected to these memories, look for music that was released during these years of someone’s life. Our 100 years of song book can help with this as it has lots of music from different genres over the past century.
Finding and playing inheritance tracks is also a great way to help someone living with dementia. These are the songs that will remind someone of their parents, children, friends and anyone importance in their life. Lastly, consider identity tracks. These are the tunes and pieces of music associated with the ‘tribe’ we belong to like sports, religion and community. Think about football chants or local favourites someone might know. For example, a person might not consider themselves a ‘music fan’, but perhaps the Wimbledon theme brings back happy sporting memories from summers gone by.
Create a personal playlist
Now that you tracked down those tunes and have assessed which ones gauge a positive reaction, you’re ready to create a personalised playlist. This can be done digitally on a streaming service like Spotify – if you need a helping hand to get started we have an automatic playlist maker for Spotify. If you have a stereo system you can also record songs on to a tape – whatever works for you will do the job perfectly.
Make a donation
Our resources are always free to anyone who needs them but if you have found our information and resources helpful, we’d be grateful if you would consider making a donation to our charity.
It costs us £1 to provide a family with a resource pack and while £1 may not seem like a big cost on paper, and with more than 900,000 people with a recorded diagnosis of dementia it would cost us £900,000 to provide everyone living with dementia with resources to help create a personalised playlist. We also have music-themed merchandise for sale including t-shirts and mugs with profits going to into our cause.
Tell someone you know about us
If you don’t directly know or support someone living with dementia, we’d love it if you could help raise awareness of the power of meaningful music for people living with dementia. We often meet people who say ‘I wish I had known about this for my loved one.’ You can help by either telling friends and family about our work or sharing one of our posts on social media. Any share big or small can go a long way to helping someone living with dementia.
