Saanich hospital offers ‘doll therapy’ to comfort dementia patients

“People in residential care may have dementia but they’re still capable of giving love.”

That was Jennifer Wear, a registered nurse at Vancouver Island’s Saanich Peninsula Hospital, describing a program that helps dementia patients by giving them baby dolls, in a story by the Peninsula News Review last year.

It’s a program that is now in full swing, as shown in this video posted to Facebook by the Saanich Peninsula Hospital Foundation (SPHF) earlier this month.

The video shows Wear sharing seven dolls with elderly patients who are seen cradling and cuddling the dolls in the hospital’s dementia care ward.

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“They might be lonely, they might get stressed really easily, and sometimes just holding something that’s soft, that looks like a baby, is enough for them to make them feel comforted.”

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This isn’t the first time that dolls have been used to comfort people living with dementia.

Miramichi, N.B. resident Beth McCormack has long created infant dolls for nursing homes in an effort to help seniors who have dementia and Alzheimer’s.

“We see the residents become suddenly less agitated, not as anxious, it’s giving them purpose and their brain actually feels that sense of comfort,” Alzheimer’s Society of New Brunswick spokeswoman Shelley Shillington told Global News last year.