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I am a 67 year old clinical psychologist, that for the past year have been
doing geriatric psychology. I work at an "Assisted Living Care Center" in
Sun City, Arizona. Our care center provides different levels of care
including a hospice. Among my patients are a number of folks who have PD,
and that started me on the path of information gathering and for the past
week or so a member of this listserver, for which I am most grateful.

We started a self help support group for our residents enlisting the help of
our Activities Director, our Nurse and our Administrator, and are now
extending invitations to others, in different  levels of care in our center.
We hope to offer this to members of the community in Sun City. When we first
started this we had little luck in getting response from local chapters of
PD associations, ( this surprised me).
We were able to use the Internet for information gathering, including some
help in starting self help groups. However, We could find little information
re: care centers such as ours.

This is what we are doing: the group meets once a week , for about an hour
to an hour and a half, most members need help getting to our meeting. We
have local professional, i.e, a pharmacist who spoke on medications used. We
also do exercises and encourage residents to do this on their own, as part
of their daily activity .We, also, discuss side effects of medication and
symptoms of PD.  Our leader is one of the residents who has had PD for over
14 years and is the most knowledgable,  the Activities Director helps by
arranging for refreshments and telephone calls. My role is not to be
present, I provide copies of material along with some e mails from members
of this list. ( I was born in Bayonne, New Jersey and by nature
automatically stay out of harms way. :-)>  ? ) The group makes all the
decisions and we all help upon their request...So far we seem to be doing
the right thing. Now, I need from you all feedback:  suggestions,
experiences, knowledge of groups similar to ours, questions that might lead
us into other areas of activity .I forgot to mention our age range is 77 to 92.

Thanks for you help,


Bernie Barber at [log in to unmask]