IF SOMEONE stops you choosing how you want to live your life, how much does it stop you from really living? Now think about it from an aged care perspective.
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Ballarat Health Services aged care clinical director and Monash professor Joseph Ibrahim questions if we are becoming too preoccupied with wrapping our elderly loved ones up in cotton wool. He wants society to stop viewing aged care as “God’s waiting room” and reconsider the seemingly small things in life that can make a big difference in happiness.
Increasingly, society is starting to take note.
Professor Ibrahim’s film Dignity of Risk has screened at six international film festivals, including the United Nations Association.
The film explores the balance between protecting a dementia patient from harm and intruding on his choices to enjoy life.
“When we started work back in 2012, this was not a fashionable topic. Timing in the release has been incredible,” Professor Ibrahim said.
“There is a big push on social justice...It fits in with campaigns like #MeToo, family violence prevention, the church – institutions we used to trust and rely on, we can’t trust to behave. People question what is acceptable as normal. The whole movement is mirrored in women’s sport. We don’t know why things are changing now but just because we used to do it one way, doesn’t mean we have to anymore.”
Professor Ibrahim has been surprised to see how much the film has connected with younger audiences. The film has been screened with other strong social justice themed movies like refugees, suicide, forced democracy. He said the film still made an impact.
He said this is about changing perception on a general acceptance of medical advice, seeking to find a lifestyle balance in overall health and well-being.
“Doing the small things like walking outside get removed to a certain extent – you can’t be outside after hours because it’s deemed too dark, you can’t be out in the sunshine or the rain,” Professor Ibrahim said. “There is a medical and professional duty of care, but if a person can’t do anything they want, isn’t that hurting them anyway.”
Professor Ibrahim said people tended to be too caught up in the big goals of life but, in his experience in aged care, those big things do not necessarily bring happiness later in life.
The Art of Ageing was put in focus for a special forum at the Museum of Old and New Art in Hobart last week, featuring Australia’s leading advocates for the elderly and people living with dementia.
Professor Ibrahim, who presented at MONA, said the platform showed how aged care was starting to greater attract a social justice audience rather than merely being a medical issue. And this made it far easier to engage people on ideas he had been exploring for a long time.
Dignity of Risk is directed by Prateek Bando and Jeremy Ley, who both worked on George Miller’s Mad Max: Fury Road.
The film won best narrative film at the 2017 Global Impact Film Festival.
Dignity of Risk is screening at Regent Cinemas on Tuesday at 6.30pm. A panel discussion will follow the 15-minute film. Book early as the session is close to sold out.
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