Many Happy Returns Press

NAPA newsletter

Mon, 15 Mar 2010 16:26:25 +0000

Saga Magazine

Mon, 15 Mar 2010 16:47:36 +0000

SAGA Magazine's Emma Soames tries out - and recommends Many Happy Returns as a great Christmas gift for an older relative.

The Journal of Dementia Care

Mon, 15 Mar 2010 16:53:43 +0000

The Journal of Dementia Care report the launch of Many Happy Returns October 2008.

Age Concern Hampshire

Mon, 15 Mar 2010 16:58:56 +0000

Sarah Reed writes for Age Concern Hampshire, February 2009:

How Easy it is to Forget Memory

Can you think of a holiday or outing from your younger days that was special in some way? The images that such an event might conjure up are also at the route of one aspect of happiness that people often forget: memory.

Research shows that reminiscence can be good for everyone. In one US study, people who reflected on pleasant memories for 20 minutes daily reported significant improvements in their overall mood and subjects said that they felt better about their relationships too.

Some might say that finding happy memories from the past encourages people to keep looking back, rather than living in the here-and-now. But one does not preclude the other and for many elderly people, their past is where most of their sense of ‘self’ resides. Even young people reminisce – twenty-somethings remembering how they loved Bagpuss or The Clangers, is hardly different to older pensioners remembering the pleasures of playing in the street, or their journeys to school.

And when people reminisce together, apart from the general enjoyment they get from comparing notes, they learn about one another in pleasurable ways that can bind them in friendship and understanding unlike few other activities.

Recently, I visited one of my ninety-something friends. She lives all alone and cannot get out, and was depressed and worried because after a recent stroke was finding that her short-term memory was failing. “I can't seem to remember even the simplest things” she said dismally. We fell into conversation about the street where she's lived all her life and how it has changed, and she told me about her friend Helen, who lived with her mother in the next-door house in the terrace.

Like my friend, caught up with caring for her elderly parents, Helen never married. “Helen's mum used to sit at that upstairs window” she said, pointing up at the back of the house, “and wave at me when I pulled the curtains back in the morning. We hardly ever spoke - it's funny to think that she lived there all those years, yet I never really knew anything about her although Helen and I were good friends.”

“In 1939, we went on holiday together, just for a week – it was all we could afford. It was a real adventure. We went down to Bournemouth by train, then each day we travelled on to another seaside town, staying in little guest houses as we went.”

I said I thought it sounded quite daring for the time. “Well I suppose it was”, she said, “but it was marvellous. How we laughed! It was the best holiday I ever had.”

“Then on the way back, we very nearly missed the train, but as it was chuffing out of the station, we ran along the platform and the guard pulled us on. We were still laughing as we got our breath back. By the time we got home we were bursting to go to the lavatory because we couldn't afford the penny we needed - we'd spent all our money!”

The charming picture she painted has stayed with me since, and yet who of her carers knows anything about her - or her life? Does she ever talk with them? “Oh no, there's never time for anything like that” she said, “they always just run in and run out. Still, at least there's the telly.” Would we want our own lives to be ignored or forgotten in this way?

I was only with her for an hour, but it was so good to hear her stories, and see her cheer up. It was probably the longest conversation she'd had with anyone for weeks.

After fifteen years volunteering for the charity Contact the Elderly and seeking ways of communicating better with my mother, who has vascular dementia,

I developed Many Happy Returns 1940s. It is box of 26 large-size cards to share, with images, background information and conversational prompts, which provide opportunities for people to enjoy each other’s company across the generations, by promoting interaction and conversation about subjects relating to everyday life.

The Times newspaper

Tue, 20 Apr 2010 09:30:08 +0100

Melanie Reid of the Times - now writes Spinal Column in the Times on Saturday Magazine - wrote

"...Anybody who has spent time with people living with dementia knows that their long-term memory can remain intact for years after short-term recall has disintegrated. A person who has no idea what they ate for breakfast that morning may – if prompted – be able to describe in detail the menu on the morning after their marriage 50 years earlier", says Sarah Reed, founder of Many Happy Returns, which produces packs of photographic cards with images from the 1940s (a 1950s set is in production) to prompt conversation in people with dementia.

It is tempting to rationalise this as a flight into the happy past from an intolerable present, but in fact the part of the brain where new memories are stored is affected earlier in dementia than where memories of long ago reside. Recollection of music and song – which is also stored differently – can remain unimpaired for longer still.

"Especially vivid are images from what David Rubin, professor of psychology at Duke University in North Carolina has termed the ‘reminiscence bump’ – the period between the ages 10 and 25" says Reed. "Various theories have been advanced as to why this should be so: our autobiographical memory storage systems are more efficient at that age; our sense of self is being formed; we have many experiences for the first time. Whatever the reason, this is the period of our lives where the brightest and most focussed pictures lie."

“Most of the world of older people is their past. When I visited my mother, who had dementia for 10 years, I would see families struggling for conversation with the people they love. They’d say ‘Steve has got into the school football team’ or ‘We’re off to Torquay for the weekend’. This would mean almost nothing to the person with dementia. But if they’d asked ‘What was your best holiday?’ they’d have got a response, especially if they had a visual trigger and some helpful conversational prompts.”

Reed launched the Many Happy Returns cards in 2008 after conducting research with 120 older people. “The same themes kept coming up, mostly to do with the domestic environment: shopping, rationing, smoking, playing games, washday and for the men, watching their father shave.”

The cards, each of which comes with a brief explanation for the uninitiated, are intended as a jumping off point for conversation and are currently used in around 800 care homes. “A picture of somebody shopping might lead the older person to remember that she walked to the high street every day because she had no fridge to store fresh food, that everything was sold by weight and put in paper bags and that there were no supermarkets.”

Prompts like photographs help release memories long locked away, says Julie Heathcote, a trainer specialising in reminiscence work for the Alzheimer’s Society. “Often, just asking a question is not enough. You need something visual, audio or tactile. I have seen so many surprising moments when there has been recognition and response from someone with dementia where the family and carers expected nothing."

John Lewis Partnership Connections magazine

Tue, 20 Apr 2010 09:43:45 +0100