A soccer team in West Bromwich, U.K., is harnessing the power of soccer to help those with dementia recover some of their fondest memories.
Albion Memories is a foundation run by the soccer team West Bromwich Albion. It offers local fans struggling with memory problems the opportunity to come in and socialize and, most importantly, remember. These fans, all patients at a local hospital, arrive with their partners or caregivers, and, decked out in their West Bromwich Albion gear, they meet players of the team.
Retired players are the ones who draw the greatest reactions, usually. They talk about soccer, yes, and the glorious days when they still played and won championships, but they also reminisce about old cafés and ice cream parlors in the area, cars that don’t drive on the streets anymore and songs from old films they still know the lyrics to, word for word. Sometimes the guests join in. Sometimes not. But the impact on them can be quite profound.
“This disease strikes at the heart of identity,” said PMC Co-Director Dr. Jason Karlawish. “It can lead to a fractured sense of who you are. The logic of an activity like this is to kindle emotionally salient memories that tap back into that identity.”
This initiative doesn’t seek to treat or cure dementia. But it can lessen the loneliness and isolation of the people living with the disease, who come in to meet and greet, to talk and be around people like them without the pressure of more formal social situations. These are people who often find it difficult to get out of the house and maintain old relationships.
One woman came in with her father. She saw him talk about the games he’d seen, the players he’d followed – she saw him transform before her eyes from a dementia patient into a soccer fan once more. When he was here, she did not see him as she knew him, she said. She saw him as his younger self.
For participants in the Albion Memories program, the experience of remembering and of being able to remember is perhaps the most powerful takeaway of all.
Read the full article in the New York Times here.