Michelle Olson, Social Gerontologist Combines Expressive Arts with Outdoor Therapy for Dementia Care

Michelle Olson, PhD, LCAT, ATR-BC, ACC/MC

Founder, Executive Director www.evergreenminds.org 

Verla's website https://treesmendus.com

Verla's new book Optimize Your Heart Rate: BalanceYour Mind and Body With Green Space. 

Verla's previous book Take Back Your Outside Mindset: Live Longer, Stress Less, and Control Your Chronic Illness

1:19 Michelle Olson is a social gerontologist, who started as a creative arts therapist with WWII vets who had serious mental health and dementia. Expressive arts include visual arts, music,  dance and drama.

05:15 What makes the difference is the ability of people who are experiencing mental difficulties to communicate in different ways. 

6:21 Michelle Olson: "When people lose the ability to talk... they can still move their bodies and use their senses -- as ways to connect and feel better."

7:19 Michelle Olson: "to do this as a family member -- we sometimes make it harder than we need to make it. It is the simple things sometimes the activity might be -- being together outdoors. Here we might spend time noticing the leaves or the light, the shadows, the textures....

7:38 Maybe its the smell in the air 

7:49 Sometimes I do forest therapy with clients and we turn around and notice things in different directions. Eg what does this acorn feel like? Maybe you can make a nature sculpture - something that will recreate this time together. 

8:47 Maybe a person does want to make a painting - then I focus on the process - maybe that product is interesting. Or maybe they want to make a poem - it might rhyme or it might not. It is the whole process of connecting that matters. 

09:58 As a social gerontologist I am interested in where we live and what we do across out whole lives....how we eat, how we move, how we socialize, how we interact with the world, do we feel safe..

10:17 When I was an arts therapist that is when the light really went on...I wanted to know more about aging. In social gerontology we look at the person holistically over the course of their lives. The field of gerontology is growing, there are financial gerontologists, environmental gerontologists... we need to know all these perspectives.

14:00 We often  don't think about environment when we think of aging.  United Nations just declared access to a healthy environment a human  right.  We  don't question why  we keep  patients and older people inside.     Dr Allen Power says balance the risk of safety and keeping people away from natural spaces. We can ask  staff  - to honour these  older people with dementia the option to go out everyday.   Paul Falkowski  PhD says  It  is  matter of changing behaviour and involving volunteers.

24:11 Evergreen Minds  Foundation - brings people together through expressive arts and green space -  helps educate staff and society.  

Interview  show notes continued on Verla's  website

For peer reviewed research on how your time  spent in green space can change your  mindset,   balance  your nervous system and  your heart  rate please go to verlafortier.substack.com  and check out my books Take Back  Your Outside  Mindset:  Live Longer, Stress Less, and Control  Your Chronic Illness and  Optimize Your Heart Rate: Balance Your Mind and Body With Green Space