NEW RICHLAND — Why?

That’s the question a nurse asked when a number of residents at her nursing home were on antipsychotic medications, even though they never had any sort of diagnosis relating to the meds.

The question steam-rolled, and now Ecumen in New Richland is taking part in the Awakenings Initiative, an organized effort to change the attitude towards caring for those with Alzheimer’s and looks to reduce — where appropriate — the use of antipsychotic drugs.

According to ecumen.org, Awakenings has been introduced to 15 nursing homes in the state of Minnesota.

Christina Cauble, the housing manager at the New Richland Ecumen location, said Ecumen implemented the program years ago. She said the program takes about a year to 1 1/2 years to implement, and the New Richland location is about half way through in doing so.

Cauble said the idea behind the program is to use alternative methods and approaches to dealing with patients. In some cases aromatherapy has proved helpful. She gave using lavender oil as a calming agent with patients who can become anxious as an example. She said the medications are lowered gradually, until eventually they’re tapered off completely. At the same time, the alternative methods are gradually added.

The New Richland Ecumen location hosted a behavior intervention last month, Cauble said, where different approaches were introduced to the staff. One example of a different approach dealt with patients who are mentally living in the past, sometimes up to 20 years ago. When dealing with a patient who has lost a spouse, yet in their mind the spouse is still alive and are being asked for, the previous approach used to be to tell the resident that their spouse was deceased and had been for some time.

Cauble said this caused too much trauma for the patient, as they then had to relive that grief and confusion all over again. She said that now the newer approach is to tell the resident that their spouse is simply at work, or somewhere else that would make sense to them at the time. Some don’t like that this approach can seem like a lie, but Cauble believes it helps the patients accept their reality and keeps them calm.

Taking part in the program is completely optional, Cauble said, and is up to the residents or their family members. As far as she knew, though, no one at her location had opted out of the program that was an eligible candidate.

According to Cauble, the New Richland location is already seeing positive results.

“It’s really cool to see the transformation,” she said. “We’re seeing a whole different side to our residents.”