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Medical Matters

Factual: Health & Wellbeing

A series of programmes looking at health issues

Medical Matters: Series 7

Medical Matters: Series 7: Episode 4: Football on the Brain

Episode 4

Episode 4: Football on the Brain

Series 7

Football on the Brain

BBC Radio Scotland - Medical Matters, Series 7, Football on the Brain

Scottish football is giving 'remarkable' new life to people with dementia.

Scottish football is giving 'remarkable' new life to people with dementia, as discovered by a groundbreaking Scottish project.

3/4 

Football is giving "remarkable" new life to people with dementia, as discovered by a groundbreaking Scottish project. As with all the best ideas, the simplicity and effectiveness of the approach is so remarkable that it is incredible that nobody stumbled upon it before, and yet it came about during a conversation between a group of Scottish football fans. Michael White is the Falkirk Football Club historian and sits on the board of a care home. He'd discovered that old football photos were a "potent trigger" for fans with dementia. This stimuli opened up discussions about memories of players and games and greatly reduced levels of anger and frustration with those men and women participating in these reminiscence sessions.

He got the Scottish Football Museum involved, they contacted Glasgow Caledonian University, and pretty soon the international medical community was aware of the discovery. The results have been so rewarding that the idea is being exported to Canada, with ice hockey providing the key to communication. 

Professor Debbie Tolson is the director of the university's Centre for Evidence Based Care of Older People. She embarked on an evaluation to see if this approach genuinely worked. Her results were impressive and she describes this kind of reminiscence work as something that could "make a big impact". There are nearly 25 million people with dementia across the world, with an estimated 4.6 million new cases each year. This programme follows the Centre's progress and evaluates the impact on the lives of those they're working with.

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