Therapy Cats for Dementia Patients
Much too often, patients (especially the elderly) are medicated with opiates and other drugs in an effort to reduce the symptoms of many conditions. Of course, it’s not just the elderly. You can’t watch an hour of TV without coming across an ad from a pharmaceutical company purporting a new drug for… well, just about anything. Sometimes it seems like we’re living in the Age of Pharmaceutical Dependence rather than the Information Age.
In an effort to bring awareness to this problem, I will be writing a series of blogs and sharing articles about Therapy Cats in different arenas. This first article is about robotic therapy cats for dementia and Alzheimer’s patients at the Hebrew Home in the Bronx. Instead of giving patients tranquilizers, these battery-powered kitties are used to reduce stress and combat the anxiety associated with these two conditions. But that’s not all they do. Incredibly, these kitty robots give the residents a sense of purpose.
Please read the article from The New York Times for the full story.
Lou Ann Wyckoff cradled the gray-and-white cat in her lap. She scratched the back of its head and the cat purred, eyes closed. When she stopped petting the cat, it opened its green eyes and meowed for more. “They are so sweet, they are so sweet,” said Ms. Wyckoff, […]
