Preserving memories in many languages: CAMH Annual Report 2004

CAMH Annual Report

Anita McGann and Dr. Luis Fornazzari from the Multilingual Multicultural Memory Clinic assessing a client.

Imagine the fear that you would feel if you started to realize that organizing your thoughts properly has become a monumental task or that you sometimes forget your way home to the house you have lived in for 50 years. Add to that the fact your first language is not English, and although relatives -- recognizing your symptoms -- have been searching, they cannot find anyone in the medical profession to whom you can describe your symptoms, in your own way, using your own language.

That is precisely how Juanita*, 69, who came from a South American country, must have felt. Her husband brought her through the doors of the Multicultural Multilingual Memory Clinic (MMMC) at CAMH last year describing her sad decline, which included an inability to take the subway anymore. The husband sobbed, "We're losing her."

Speaking with Juanita in her own language, Dr. Luis Fornazzari, Behavioural Neurologist and Acting Clinical Director of the Neuro/Geriatric Psychiatry Program at CAMH, and a Professor in the Division of Neurology at the University of Toronto, conducted various tests on her. He quickly realized that her sudden onset of symptoms was inconsistent with most forms of dementia. Juanita was able to open up to Dr. Fornazzari and confided that she had been raped by her father at the age of nine.

Despite this traumatic incident, Juanita married well, had two wonderful daughters and moved to Canada, where she had lived for decades. Recently, she received a call from relatives that her father had died. Within five days, she received another call; her brother was also dead. Soon after that, she became disoriented and depressed.

Dr. Fornazzari knows that depression in the elderly often mimics symptoms of dementia. He concluded that the deaths triggered some repressed memories for Juanita. Once she was able to deal with the cause of her post-traumatic stress and the resulting depression, she improved markedly.

This experience, along with many others, prompted Dr. Fornazzari and his team to ponder whether a memory clinic existed anywhere in Toronto (or Canada, for that matter) that could offer client services in multiple languages. The answer was no. Seeing an opportunity, Dr. Fornazzari looked around the clinic and realized that up to 18 languages, including Swahili, were spoken by program staff. At that moment, he realized he could vastly improve his memory clinic by serving the growing multicultural population of Toronto and the province in languages other than English and French. As a result, the Multicultural Multilingual Memory Clinic was born.

So far, the clinic serves clients in nine languages: English, French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Greek, Mandarin, Cantonese and Hindi. A multidisciplinary team assesses each client and suggests treatment. All clients seen at the clinic receive follow-up appointments every six months for clinical and also research purposes. Clients range in age from 60 to 85 years.

As part of a provincial Alzheimer's initiative, care providers at the clinic are now working with family physicians across Ontario, to offer them awareness, training and education about Alzheimer's and dementia.
Multidisciplinary research is also taking place in the MMMC. Currently, Dr. Fornazzari and his team are engaged in a number of multi-centre dementia studies across Canada and the U.S. and internationally.

*(not her real name)

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