New thoughts on care for Alzheimers patients

The New York Times has a decently detailed piece on how a Phoenix, Arizona nursing home is caring for some of the most difficult patients. Essentially, their approach is to cater to the patients' emotional well-being as a way to improve their overall well-being. That means they have some unconventional remedies on hand:

Dementia patients at Beatitudes are allowed practically anything that brings comfort, even an alcoholic “nip at night,” said Tena Alonzo, director of research. “Whatever your vice is, we’re your folks,” she said.

Once, Ms. Alonzo said: “The state tried to cite us for having chocolate on the nursing chart. They were like, ‘It’s not a medication.’ Yes, it is. It’s better than Xanax.”

I sat on the prior blog entry for months because it was a little uncomfortable to discuss the subject so openly. However, the Times piece made me reconsider. It's so rare to hear about ways of helping patients feel better that I wanted to mention it. Yet if the Times article has a fault, it is that the specifics of the challenges to coping with such patients is not much discussed. (The article is part of an ongoing series in the paper, though, so I've no doubt other pieces in the series go into sufficient detail.) In that light, the months-old, unpublished entry seemed worth dredging up.