Pulse
Visual Cues
A Minneapolis Institute of Arts program aids people with memory loss.
By Carmen Peota
Medical student Jamie Starks has witnessed firsthand how quickly the scope of a person’s life can shrink because of cognitive decline. She saw her grandmother, who was diagnosed with dementia with Lewy bodies several years ago, go from being active and independent to being withdrawn and depressed as she found herself able to do less and less. Starks had seen similar effects when she worked at an adult day-care center during her undergraduate years in Madison, Wisconsin. But there, Starks also saw something else: how people with dementia changed when they were exposed to art and music and took trips into the community.
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Medical students Kim Spronk and Jamie Starks want the wider medical community to know that the Minneapolis Institute of Arts’ Discover Your Story program is a resource for anyone. “We’d like to get the word out to providers that if they have patients who have memory loss or dementia and need an outing or intellectual stimulation, we’d encourage them to tell their patients about this program,” Spronk says.
Tours take place on the second Friday and Saturday of each month and can be scheduled for any time the museum is open. All tours are free, but preregistration is required. To reserve a space, call 612/870-3140. For further information, go to www.artsmia.org/index.php?section_id=26.
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Last year, when Starks stumbled on a description of the Discover Your Story tours, a Minneapolis Institute of Arts (MIA) program in which specially trained docents lead discussions about selected pieces of art, she signed on as a volunteer. The tours are designed to help people with memory loss reflect and reminisce as they compare their own stories with those told in the works of art. Starks, who recently began her third year of medical school, escorts people on the tours.
Starks says people who come in withdrawn and reserved opened up during the tours. “You get them in front of art, and you ask them questions about the art and experiences from their life and if it reminds them of anything,” she says. “It’s really quite remarkable to see them awaken and see how happy and engaged they become.”
Starks thinks that’s in part because of the way the leaders engage tour participants. “You can see them respond to being treated like there isn’t something wrong with them. They get to escape from being someone with a disease for at least an hour, be normal adults, be intellectually stimulated, and interact with their peers.”
Starks was so impressed with the program that in the fall of 2010 she recruited classmate Kim Spronk to go on a tour. “I only had to go once to see that it was a great program and something that I definitely wanted to be involved in,” Spronk says. Now both women are recruiting their peers at the medical school to volunteer with the program.
Spronk points out that volunteering benefits the students in addition to the people they’re trying to help. “There’s really a lot to be learned about how to effectively engage with someone who has dementia,” she says. It’s a skill Starks thinks will be increasingly important for doctors in the future, as the population ages. And that’s one reason she and Spronk are trying to get more medical students involved.
But both say the best part of volunteering is watching the way people respond to their experience in the museum. “Sometimes it happens the moment they walk in the door,” Spronk says, noting that they begin to look up and around immediately because the museum itself is beautiful. “We see them come alive.”