May is Older Americans Month:
Interview with Miriam Caiden, MSG PhD

As an Educational Gerontologist, Miriam Caiden, MSG, PhD, has worked to support, train and educate older adults for more than 25 years.  At WISE & Healthy Aging, Dr. Caiden’s work focuses on creating and teaching curriculum and facilitating learning activities with older adults in the early stages of memory loss as part of our WISE Minds program.

What is WISE Minds?

WISE Minds is a program within WISE & Healthy Aging’s Adult Day Service Center, that offers learning and exercise activities to help stimulate our clients both mentally and physically. Research now confirms that exposing adults in early stage memory loss to physically and mentally challenging group activities can help to slow the process and stave off the anxiety and depression that too often goes along with it.

What do clients do as part of WISE Minds? 

We offer many kinds of activities that help stimulate our clients mentally and physically. It could be a card game, a word game, art therapy or maybe it’s a stretch and warmup activity. The important thing is that we keep them busy and engaged with structured activities throughout the day.

How did you manage to do these activities with clients when they were at home during COVID?

When we shut down for COVID on March 17, 2020, we had to retool our curriculum so that we could make it work online. We were either the first – or among the very first – to launch WISE Minds online three weeks after lockdown, on April 7.  We started with five participants and me in those early days of the lockdown. By the end of April, we had 10 people each session and in May, we had expanded the program to two groups, for three 90-minutes sessions a week, with both myself and Rachel S. Sangestanian teaching the classes.

What kind of activities were you able to do online?

We found that word games, conversations, discussions, trivia – a lot of pencil and paper exercises worked well. Sometimes we would send a kit with materials for craft projects to their homes and then do the crafts with them all of us together online. Singing was more difficult to do, but if we had them hold up cards when they heard certain words, it worked.  So for example, during the holidays, we “sang” Jingle Bells, and when they heard the word “Jingle,” they would hold up a red card – and when they got to the chorus, they would hold up both a red and green card.  It was fun and it made them think and use their mental muscles.

We also did a lot of chair exercises to keep them active.  And for many of them, this was their only opportunity to do physical exercise. It was not perfect, but it was a lifeline for our clients on lockdown.

Are you still doing WISE Minds online? 

Yes. We still offer classes online via Zoom throughout the week for people who can’t or don’t feel comfortable meeting back in person. 

What makes WISE Minds work? 

In general, WISE Minds works because it provides social and cognitive stimulation. We can’t cure, prevent or make memory loss or dementia better, but we do know that symptoms get worse without social interaction and being cognitively challenged. The bottom line is that we saw people get worse during COVID and now we’re dealing with the aftermath and working to address that with the best possible programming.