Kindness shown by a complete stranger

August 30, 2013   Carers, mental health

Love letters and kindness may improve mental health

By Lorna Stewart Health Check, BBC World Service

“You matter to me. In a way I cannot explain, you matter to me. And you, you are a marvel… you and all the parts of you.”

It’s not the kind of thing you normally write to a complete stranger.

But after graduating from college and moving to New York City, Hannah Brencher was feeling anxious and depressed. She found herself not wanting to be around other people and “just really unravelling”.

Then she started writing love letters to strangers and leaving them all over the city. The first letter she left on a train simply addressed: “If you find this letter then it’s for you.”

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The Paralympics And A Legacy For The Disabled

August 29, 2013   Carers, disability

| General News, Politics | By:

The Paralympics And A Legacy For The Disabled

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A year after the ‘breakthrough moment’ of the Paralympics, attitudes towards the disabled have been slow to change, according to disability groups.Cuts to disability benefits and the government’s ill-judged ‘shirkers vs skivers’ campaign have thrown something of a spanner into the works of public perception of the disabled, with 81% of those surveyed saying they felt attitudes hadn’t improved. 22% felt attitudes had actually got worse.According to a survey by disability charity Scope, negative perceptions have been driven by the government and media:

84% of those that say attitudes have got worse saying the ‘benefit scrounger’ rhetoric from politicians and the media has had a negative effect on views of disabled people. The poll by Opinium found that nearly one in five (17%) of disabled people report they have either experienced hostile or threatening behaviour or even been attacked.

The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) say they ‘very consciously do not use the language of ‘scroungers’ and ‘workshy’, but when even the likes of Iain Duncan Smith aren’t above misusing statistics to imply that claimants are fraudulent, it’s hardly reassuring. A further division between those with visible disabilities compared to those without has been highlighted by campaigners — leading to a climate of disbelief and hostility.

Despite the huge public enthusiasm for the Paralympics, its success has proved a bit of a double-edged sword with athletes being held up as aspirational examples for disabled people. But as Paralympic dressage rider Sophie Christiansen says:

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Rooms worth remembering are set up at hospital

August 29, 2013   Alzheimer’s, Carers, dementia

FOUR pop-up 1950s living rooms worth £4,500 have been bought by Burton’s Queen’s Hospital to help elderly patients with dementia.

Thursday, August 29, 2013

Derby Telegraph

The reminiscence pods, known as RemPods, contain decade-appropriate décor, furnishings, period newspapers and magazines, a television playing recordings of old black and white shows and an old-style radio.

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    The RemPods can act as a talking point to help people with dementia.

Patients and visitors to the hospital were first shown a RemPod during national Dementia Awareness Week in May this year, when one was set up in the main corridor.

This demonstration led to Burton’s hospitals’ League of Friends’ decision to buy RemPods for the trust’s three hospital sites – Queen’s, Samuel Johnson Community Hospital, in Lichfield, and the Sir Robert Peel Community Hospital, in Tamworth – and they are due to be delivered next week.

The remaining three will go to the two other hospitals.

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