Therapeutic Activities for Elderly: Benefits and Ideas
Elderly adults are often prone to mood, mobility, and cognitive decline due to aging, but engaging in therapeutic activities for elderly such as art therapy, music therapy, and physical exercise can help improve their overall well-being and quality of life.
To avoid or delay this, therapeutic activities for elderly are the best option, allowing them to improve their quality of life.
By engaging in therapeutic activities for elderly, they can enhance their creativity, feel useful, enjoy new interests, foster interpersonal relationships, and maintain cognitive skills to stimulate their mental health.
These are not the only benefits of therapeutic activities for elderly, but broadly speaking, these are the main ones. That is why it is important to know in depth what other activities the elderly can do to improve their quality of life.
Physical Activities for Elderly
Physical exercises are part of the therapeutic activities for elderly as it helps them regain some of their mobility and flexibility to perform daily tasks.
Exercise routines must focus on mobility and not on lifting excessive weight that can hurt the back or other parts of the body.
Dance, for example, is a rhythmic exercise that allows you to work your reflexes and your body as a whole since dance has a marked rhythm that makes you have to coordinate your arms and feet in unison with the song. Besides, music produces sensations in the body responsible for happiness.
Some other therapeutic activities for elderly are outdoor exercises, such as walking or cycling, since they help a lot in the adult’s mobility and are not activities that require too much effort.
Cognitive Activities for Elderly
Cognitive activities help the elderly to focus; puzzle exercises such as memory puzzles, word search, Sudoku, etc., improve their performance, such as memory, attention, language, and planning, among other things.
Other therapeutic activities for elderly to stimulate cognitive functioning are reading and writing since these are focused on expanding and improving vocabulary while allowing their creativity to fly.
Social Activities for Elderly
Therapeutic activities for elderly, whose purpose is to socialize, have the main benefit of preventing the older adult from having any episodes of loneliness or depression due to the lack of a bond.
Senior centers are an appropriate place for older adults to form bonds with people their age.
Part of the therapeutic activities for elderly that take place in El Mirador is focused on creating social bonds so that, in this way, everyone works together and there is harmony, minimizing to a great extent the feeling of loneliness.
Creative Activities for Elderly
Therapeutic activities for elderly that best foster creativity include painting and drawing. Painting and drawing, in addition to fostering creativity, are efficient in lowering stress levels or any other type of feeling that is being repressed.
Some other therapeutic activities for elderly that encourage creativity are gardening: planting, mowing the lawn, and watering flowers, among others. None of these activities require a great deal of effort on the part of the elderly.
Alternative Therapies for Elderly
There are also other types of therapeutic activities for elderly that also significantly improve the quality of life.
Acupuncture and therapeutic massages are clear examples since these activities can lower stress and fatigue levels and generate a state of relaxation. However, unlike the previous ones, they must be performed by a professional.
Other therapeutic activities for elderly that do not need an expert are meditation and yoga. The latter, as with physical activities, allows the elderly to regain their flexibility while in a state of total relaxation.
How to Choose the Right Therapeutic Activities for Elderly
Although therapeutic activities for elderly have the priority of improving certain aspects such as mobility, flexibility, and quality of life, it is a fact that not all of them can be applied to our elderly.
The first thing to do before selecting any activity is to evaluate the interests and capabilities of the elderly person, taking into account their physical and cognitive limitations to know if there will be any complications when performing them.
Also, of course, considering some external factors such as the available budget and if the elderly person can do them or will need the help of someone to accompany them.
Tips for Engaging Elderly People in Therapeutic Activities
Getting the elderly to do therapeutic activities is not easy since, at that age, the most common thing to do is rest at home or do any activity at home.
For this reason, some tips that could help to make them attend voluntarily are:
- Create a comfortable and safe environment for all older adults.
- Encourage participation to work together (as mentioned in the social activities).
- Tailor the therapeutic activities for elderly to the needs and abilities of each individual.
The Benefits of Therapeutic Activities for Elderly
Summarizing the benefits of therapeutic activities for elderly, we find that all of them are aimed at improving the adult’s physical health.
However, there are other activities focused on cognitive functioning by performing actions that require coordination and memory use.
Finally, we find the fact that it improves mental health and emotional well-being by working together with other seniors, increasing socialization and commitment to the community.
Challenges and Solutions in Providing Therapeutic Activities for Elderly
When providing therapeutic activities for elderly, you may encounter certain challenges that can make it difficult to do them correctly. For example, staff and resource limitations.
These make it difficult for the implementers and the older adults themselves since the lack of staffing coupled with attention to individual needs and preferences will make it difficult for the activities to be carried out correctly.
Examples of Successful Therapeutic Activity Programs for Elderly
There are examples of places where seniors can engage in therapeutic activities with a team of professionals to assist them at all times.
Nursing homes and Adult Day Care Centers are some examples of places where therapeutic activities for elderly can be done without any worries.
However, assisted living centers, such as El Mirador, are currently trending not only for these therapeutic activities for elderly but also for the care and attention they receive 24 hours a day, year-round.
The Best Way To Achieve Therapeutic Activities for Elderly
The elderly are extremely important in our family, and helping them to carry out therapeutic activities is a way of thanking them so that their quality of life can greatly improve.
Therefore, if you are looking for a place where they can perform these activities while receiving the attention and care they deserve, Casa de Retiro El Mirador is your best option.
In our senior care placement, we focus on making the experience of performing therapeutic activities for elderly rewarding and unforgettable. Our team of highly trained professionals and our facilities are designed to make it easy for them to be there every day at all hours.