Children need to be taught what dementia is. The only question is how to do it. The project «My grandmother — Yaga» offers a good way.
How to explain to a child why his beloved grandmother suddenly began to forget his name, swear, fill the room with unnecessary things, or even stopped recognizing him? Merz Pharma has chosen an unusual way to tell children about what dementia is by releasing a collection of fairy tales, each of which is dedicated to different manifestations of senile dementia. “We do not know how to treat this disease,” explains geriatrician Natalia Shpak. “But we can help those families who are faced with it. It is often the children who have the hardest time understanding what is happening to their loved ones. We asked writers, doctors, psychologists, actors and just parents to remember stories from their childhood or come up with them based on famous fairy tales about Baba Yaga, Vasilisa and the Nightingale the Robber. Quite serious topics are woven into fascinating and sometimes funny stories: how to identify the symptoms of dementia, how to behave with patients, how to learn to care for them. Some fairy tales are better suited for young children, others for teenagers. The book also has an audio version: Yuri Stoyanov, Alexei Kortnev, Sergei Chonishvili and others read the stories. But you can also try yourself as a storyteller.
You can also download the book and find out more on the website memini.ru