What is Reminiscence Therapy?
Reminiscence therapy uses prompts, such as photos, music or familiar items from the past, to encourage the patient to talk about earlier memories. It’s generally offered to people in their later years who have mood or memory problems, or need help dealing with the difficulties that come along with aging. Since the late 1990s, partially controlled studies have shown that this treatment has a small but significant positive effect on mood, self-care, the ability to communicate and well-being. In some cases, this therapy improves intellectual functioning.The History of Reminiscence as Therapy The idea that reminiscing could be therapeutic was first proposed in the 1960s. Robert Butler, a prominent psychiatrist who specialized in geriatric medicine, coined the term “life review.” He proposed what many now take as a given: When approaching death, people find it helpful to put their lives in perspective. In an earlier decade, talking about distant memories was thought of as “living in the pas
