From specifically adapted performances to telling new stories about memory, drama groups are innovating with music, movement and wordless performance to bring the joy of theatre to everyone

When my grandma was a child, she wanted to be a star. She would hide behind the kitchen door when her parents had friends over and do her best opera singer impression, hoping to be discovered. In her last years, when she was living with dementia, singing to her was one of the few guarantees of hearing her laugh, the words to the songs often still as clear as they had ever been in her mind.

Music has long been known to help rustle up the joys and memories that make a life, which dementia can obscure. “When I’m singing,” says one participant of Our Time , a drama group at Leeds Playhouse for people living with dementia, “I don’t feel that I’m on my own.” These sessions are led by Nicky Taylor, a researcher and practitioner who radiates enthusiasm for changing the stories we tell about a condition that affects more than 900,000 people in the UK. “People with dementia are often written off,” says Taylor, “but our participants are sometimes contributing right up until the last days or weeks of their life. That, to me, is remarkable.”

Continue reading...

Your inner voice can open up huge possibilities for change and growth, but it can be strangely hard to hear it. In the first of a new series, we look at how to really listen

I often find myself thinking about the famous question that ends Mary Oliver’s poem The Summer Day:

Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?

Continue reading...

Numbers living with or dying from disorders such as stroke rises dramatically to 3.4bn people – 43% of global population

Neurological conditions ranging from migraine to stroke, Parkinson’s disease and dementia, are now the leading cause of ill-health worldwide, causing 11.1 million deaths in 2021, research has revealed.

The number of people living with or dying from disorders of the nervous system has risen dramatically over the past three decades, with 43% of the world’s population – 3.4 billion people – affected in 2021, according to a study published in the Lancet .

Continue reading...

University of Oxford study shows benefits and risks of technology to healthcare, but ethical issues remain

Britain’s hard-pressed carers need all the help they can get. But that should not include using unregulated AI bots, according to researchers who say the AI revolution in social care needs a hard ethical edge.

A pilot study by academics at the University of Oxford found some care providers had been using generative AI chatbots such as ChatGPT and Bard to create care plans for people receiving care.

Continue reading...

Studies suggest the BCG jab discovered a century ago could provide a cheap and effective way of boosting the immune system to protect people from developing the condition

Scientific discoveries can emerge from the strangest places. In early 1900s France, the doctor Albert Calmette and the veterinarian Camille Guérin aimed to discover how bovine tuberculosis was transmitted. To do so, they first had to find a way of cultivating the bacteria. Sliced potatoes – cooked with ox bile and glycerine – proved to be the perfect medium.

As the bacteria grew, however, Calmette and Guérin were surprised to find that each generation lost some of its virulence . Animals infected with the microbe (grown through many generations of their culture) no longer became sick but were protected from wild TB. In 1921, the pair tested this potential vaccine on their first human patient – a baby whose mother had just died of the disease. It worked, and the result was the Bacille Calmette-Guérin (BCG) vaccine that has saved millions of lives.

Continue reading...

Mitchell, who had dementia, announces her death in letter published posthumously on her blog

The assisted dying advocate and bestselling author Wendy Mitchell, who spent years documenting her dementia, has died, her family has said.

Mitchell, 68, discussed her death in a letter published posthumously on her blog on Thursday.

Continue reading...

Two dementia medicines set for approval in Britain are first to improve patients’ lives directly – but condition must be diagnosed

People in Britain could benefit from a key medical breakthrough next year. They may be given access to the first drugs ever developed to slow the impact of Alzheimer’s disease.

The first of these medicines – lecanemab – was recently approved in the US and Japan, where treatments using it have already been launched. A second drug, donanemab, is expected to follow soon, and next year it is anticipated that the UK medical authorities will consider both of them for approval in Britain.

Continue reading...

She showed her love for John in a way that neither of them could have envisioned.

Music can reduce agitation and medication and two initiatives are trying to give everyone the chance to benefit from its power

Catherine has lived with dementia for five years. She can no longer find the words to talk to her children, but when she sings with her dementia choir she remembers the lyrics to songs from her childhood and joins in with word-perfect gusto.

Mark, diagnosed with dementia last year, was becoming isolated and depressed. Until, that is, his care home started a choir. Gradually enticed in by the music therapist, his mental health has transformed: now sociable and enthusiastic, Mark often encourages residents to have singalongs before bedtime.

Continue reading...