For years, Episcopal Retirement Services has been proud to be recognized as one of the Tristate’s leading providers of cutting-edge memory care. And thanks to our stellar reputation, seniors and Cincinnati families know to turn to Deupree Cottages, and our sister memory care communities at Marjorie P. Lee, for the latest and most enriching cognitive loss and dementia therapies.

We offer a wide-range of memory care supports, including Java Music, SAIDO Learning, iN2L computer-based learning, Music & Memory, and art therapy — all designed to help seniors protect, preserve, and extend their memories. Our weekly Mind Fit series staves off memory loss through the Cognitive Therapeutics Method (CTM) and has resulted in significant improvements in our residents’ outlook and quality of life.   

What is the Cognitive Therapeutics Method?

CTM is a brain health program that was developed by researchers at Home Care Assistance, California-based memory care, and senior services provider. It incorporates over 300 tailored interventions. Most are delivered in one-on-one sessions with a specially-trained facilitator, also known as a “coach.” Others are group activities. All are designed to work together to address the brain’s whole function.

Memory is just one of the brain’s five primary cognitive domains. The others are executive functioning (reasoning, problem-solving, and judgment), attention (the ability to focus and concentrate), language (speaking, reading, writing, and comprehending), and visual-spatial perception.

CTM exercises all the domains, an innovation over other therapies, which usually target only one or two of them at once. It’s based on research that has indicated that seniors who stay more engaged and more active are less likely to develop early dementia.

You see, the activities of daily living are holistic — they require all the brain’s domains to act simultaneously and in coordination with each other.

You couldn’t walk to the store successfully, for example, if:

• your visual-spatial perception wasn’t telling you where you are in space and time, relative to the store and your home;
• your memory wasn’t telling you how to get to the store, what you needed to buy when you get there and how to return home;
• your attention wasn’t sufficient to allow you to concentrate on getting to the store;
• your language center couldn’t comprehend the sign that told you which building was the store; and
• your executive functions weren’t telling you why you need to go in the first place, helping you to find items, compare prices, and calculate whether you had the money to buy the items you needed.

The theory behind the Cognitive Therapeutics Method is that, if normal activities are therapeutic, treatments should mimic the way that daily activities stimulate our brains, by challenging all its domains to work together. Therapy sessions thus include a variety of tasks, designed to exercise all the cognitive functions.

CTM at Deupree

In October 2017, we began offering weekly CTM sessions to Deupree House and Deupree Cottages residents. Every Wednesday morning at 11:30, Rosie Abel, a trained coach from Home Care Assistance Cincinnati, leads our Mind Fit series in the Conference Room.

Mind Fit is a fun and informative brain fitness group, which uses CTM-based group activities to keep residents engaged, happily socialized and actively learning.

It’s also optional. As with all the therapies we offer in our memory care suite, residents and their family caregivers can customize their experience by choosing which activities they wish to participate in.

That’s what we mean by person-centered, dignified memory care.

As Episcopal Retirement Services care providers, we believe that all seniors and their families should have a choice in the care they receive, and in the manner that care is to be delivered.

Might Deupree Cottages be the right choice for you or your elder loved one for residential memory care?

We’d love to offer you a tour of our memory care community. Schedule one today, and see the difference that person-centered care makes in the lives of Cincinnati’s seniors.