CSUN University News Clippings

CSUN instructor, Dr. Arnold Bresky, uses art therapy with dementia patients

(June 30, 2009)

Tony Castro
New York Times News Service

(Jun 30, 2009)If a picture is worth a thousand words, Dr. Arnold Bresky believes a painting is worth a million memories.

The suburban Los Angeles physician, who calls himself a “preventive gerontologist,” has been using art therapy in working with Alzheimer’s and dementia patients — and he claims a 70 per cent success rate in improving memories.

“I have 96-year-old people who get better,” says Bresky, 69, who believes that encouraging Alzheimer’s and dementia patients to draw and paint exercises their brains and turns back the clock on their memory loss.

“I have patients … learning to draw and paint for the first time in their lives, and their quality of life improves.”

Patients such as octogenarian Yolanda Wood of Camarillo swear by Bresky’s program.

“I’ve been a patient of his for years, and I do his art therapy program all the time,” Wood says. “I’m always drawing, and it’s helped me. It’s even helped me pass my driver’s licence test.”

Last spring, Wood was notified by the state’s Department of Motor Vehicles that, because of her age, she would have to retake her driving examination.

“I went to Dr. Bresky and I said, ‘Am I going to be able to do this?’ And he said, ‘Of course,’ and we went to work on learning all the driving laws. When I took the test, I made a perfect 100.”

Bresky, who gave up his obstetrics practice 12 years ago to work on preventing memory loss, calls his program a “brain tune-up,” and includes a multidisciplinary approach that also includes the use of music.

“My program improves the memory function to enhance a person’s quality of life,” he says.

Bresky teaches his program to caregivers and nursing students in courses at California State University-Northridge, Pierce College and through his book, Brain Tuneup: The Secret for Caregiver Success, published last year.

At the Sunrise Senior Living facility in Woodland Hills, Bresky recently introduced his program to eight residents who had never worked with him before, with remarkable results in getting them each to draw the face of a person by copying lines and patterns from one sheet of paper to a grid on another sheet.

The results were Cubistlike renditions of faces.

By the end of the session, the octogenarian residents of the facility were animated and eager to discuss what they had just done.

“It got me concentrating, and I like that,” said Molly Morgan.

Bresky says his program gets people, especially those who are older and suffering from memory problems, exercising their brains.

“The brain works through numbers and patterns,” he says. “The numbers are on the left side of your brain, the patterns are on the right side. What I’m doing is connecting the two sides.

“And we’re getting the brain to grow new cells. It’s called ‘brain plasticity.’ The brain changes physically to the environment.”

And his program, Bresky believes, will become even more valuable as aging baby boomers boost the number of people suffering from Alzheimer’s and dementia to record levels.

Publication: Hamilton Spectator - Canada