When Words Have Lost Their Meaning: Alzheimer's Patients Communicate Through Art

Therapist Abraham shows how art can provide people with Alzheimer's disease with a way to express their thoughts and emotions, when they can no longer communicate well verbally and words have lost their meaning. Abraham believes it is one's moral obligation to provide elders with this tool, lest they be prematurely deemed beyond interaction. The confidence and self-esteem of elders--and that of the people who love them--can be bolstered by art therapy. And this is the first work demonstrating that art is not just busy work for those with Alzheimer's, but a profound and symbolic method allowing them to communicate. This work includes more than 70 drawings and paintings by people with Alzheimer's, and case histories of the men and women who created the artworks.

RUTH ABRAHAM is a Senior Lecturer in Art Therapy for a Post Graduate Program in the Beit Berl College School of Art in Israel. She maintains a private practice as an art therapist with children and adults. For eight years she worked as an art therapist in a center for dementia patients. In her spare time she continues to paint and write.