CLOWN doctor Jean-Paul Bell is coming to Wellington to talk about the benefits of laughter for dementia sufferers – and he has the research to back his theories up.Jean-Paul is one of five humour therapists who took part in a Smile Study in Sydney last year.
They spent three months going around nursing homes and he says the results were amazing.
At the beginning of the study, which involved 400 people across 36 institutions, many of the dementia sufferers were not speaking.
ABOVE RIGHT: SAY CHEESE: Jean-Paul Bell coaxes a smile from a client. IMAGE: riadzany.blogspot.
“Then those skills started to kick in again, because you were concentrating on them on a regular basis,” said Jean-Paul, speaking to Richard Aedy on Radio National, Australia
“The whole thing about a humour intervention with people with dementia is that it grounds them. It gets them connected again.”
The Smile Study showed that after three months of humour therapy, dementia patients were showing 20% less agitated behaviour.
This is the same drop carers could expect from the use of anti-psychotic drugs, with none of the side effects or higher risk of death associated with the medication.
Jean-Paul says his success in encouraging people to engage with him is based on his ability to get to know a little of their backgrounds and incorporate it into his “play up” with them.
“What we found was that only certain parts of the brain go out of action, other parts are there, complete. Often the long-term memory is very good.
“Some of them are in their 90s, they have a huge personal history. You get to know their history and then you can build up a bit of a profile and bring it into the play.”
He is going to be speaking at the Moving Forward Together: Services For Older People conference hosted by the New Zealand Council of Christian Social Services this week.
Paul Barber of the NZCCSS is one of the conference organisors and says bringing Jean-Paul to Wellington as a key-note speaker was suggested to him by a colleague.
“We hold these conferences in order to bring people together to network and look at latest developments.
“Jean-Paul was suggested as somebody who would have some interesting things to say, a fresh perspective.”
Home of St Barnabas Trust general manager Shirley Hennesy is coming from Dunedin for the conference and has registered for Jean-Paul’s workshop.
“We know there is research that shows laughter is really good for your health and mental well-being,” says Shirley.
“While we do try to use humour randomly, I’ll be interested to see how that can be used in a structured, therapeutic way. How to incorporate laughter in a way that’s respectful of people with dementia.”