Dietert Center’s dementia program at interview 50: isolation is as harmful as smoking 15 cigarettes a day

The 50th interview of Lead Live’s Fifth Annual Nonprofit Week belonged to two women who spend their days inside one of the most quietly urgent health crises in the Hill Country.

T. Teresa Salmon — known simply as “T” at the Dietert Center, a nickname adopted because two Teresas work there and confusion is inadvisable in a dementia program — is the Director of Senior Support Services and the driving force behind Dementia Care Advocates. She appeared Thursday on Lead Live with Executive Director Brenda Thompson carrying a statistic that stopped the broadcast cold.

“Being isolated is equal to smoking 15 cigarettes a day for our brain.”

That is the research basis for the Take Five Club — DCA’s respite program that runs Mondays, Tuesdays, and Thursdays with a strict maximum of 10 participants. The club gives people living with dementia a structured, social environment with peers who understand what they are experiencing. It gives their caregivers — often a spouse or adult child — a few hours to rest, run errands, or simply exist without being responsible for another person’s safety.

Two spots are currently open.

The transition into the program can be hard. Thompson compared it to dropping a child off at daycare for the first time.

“We’ve had some clients that come in to Take Five and it’s hard for that spouse to leave them there,” she said. “We try to really coax them.”

Once they adjust, participants settle in quickly. Thompson’s own mother-in-law attends two days a week.

“She may not remember a whole lot of stuff,” Thompson said, “but she remembers what days are Take Five days. She knows when it’s time to go.”

The Dementia Care Advocates program was founded roughly 15 years ago by a local man whose wife was diagnosed with dementia. He partnered with T’s predecessor, Tina Woods, to build community support infrastructure. Today the program is one of the Dietert Center’s signature offerings, funded almost entirely through private donations and an annual charity golf tournament. T and her part-time colleague Martha are the only paid staff. Every other facilitator and program assistant is a volunteer.

For T, the work is also personal. Her own mother now has dementia. But she said the passion came before that.

“When I came into senior living, I just found that I could do things with people that had dementia because I seemed to understand it,” she said. “And then, once I came to the Dietert Center, I just took a deep dive into dementia and I really understand it.”

The program’s fall class schedule is built around the belief that knowledge is the most powerful tool a caregiver has. A new class — Is It Normal Aging or Is It Dementia? — debuts Nov. 19 and is designed to be, in T’s words, “very non-threatening.” It covers the line between ordinary forgetfulness and early warning signs.

A class on sleep and hearing addresses two modifiable risk factors. Deep sleep, T explained, is when the brain moves short-term memories into long-term storage — a process that dementia disrupts. And hearing, counterintuitively, is the single most modifiable risk factor for preventing dementia.

“We don’t hear with our ears,” she said. “The sounds come in through our ears, but we process all of that with our brain. And if we don’t use it, we lose it.”

A communication class teaches families to restructure how they speak to a loved one with dementia. Long sentences become obstacles.

“You don’t say five sentences to say, ‘Hey, we’re going to go to the store and get eggs and milk,'” T said. “You say, ‘We’re going to go to the store.’ Period. Because they’ve already lost you at ‘We’re going to go.'”

Other offerings include The Right Place for Mom — a practical guide to evaluating residential care facilities — and a Stages of Dementia class that has drawn exceptional reviews from local families.

Support groups meet on the second Wednesday of each month at the Dietert Center for caregivers — the group has grown large enough that T and Martha split it into two sections — and on the fourth Wednesday at the Presbyterian Church for both the caregiver and the person with dementia together, following completion of the Changes, Challenges, and Choices preparatory class. Private hour-long consultations are available for families who cannot attend group sessions.

On the medical frontier, T pointed to new FDA-approved infusion treatments that are actively removing amyloid plaques from the brain. She described following one patient through two years of infusions.

“Had no plaques whatsoever in the brain,” she said.

The treatments do not reverse damage already done, but they extend quality of life in meaningful ways — and they represent a reason for cautious optimism in a disease that has historically offered none.

For any family that does not know where to start, T offered the simplest possible instruction.

“Just come to the Dietert Center and ask for T,” she said. “And I will sit down with you.”

Dietert Center: dietertcenter.org. Take Five Club inquiries and private consultations: contact T directly at the Dietert Center.