The painted murals that include a church with its muted stained-glass windows, restaurants and pots of flowers are more than just a pretty addition to the Conway Regional Medical Center Senior Behavioral Health Unit.
The murals serve to calm agitated dementia patients and keep them from trying to wander off, said Donna Beshears, activity therapist.
Beshears said she talked to her supervisor about the idea for the murals.
“We had heard nursing homes were doing this,” she said. “My thought was it helps patients. We have a lot of patients who have dementia, and they wander, and they exit-seek. The whole idea was to try to camouflage the exit doors and get them to turn around.”
She also said wall murals can be an effective way of redirecting patients away from a situation that may cause agitation, such as asking to go to the post office or the bank, or to catch a bus.
“First of all, I went and researched what were some good things [for a mural]. I wanted soft colors, and I wanted different ideas,” Beshears said.
Longtime artist Jan Mallett of Conway was selected for the project. It was paid for by donations made to the Conway Regional Health Foundation, said Dot Welch, foundation associate director.
Mallett said she was intrigued by the project, for one reason, because she previously had an elderly friend with dementia for whom Mallett had done some painting.
Beshears said she and Mallett collaborated on the scenes for the murals. One is painted from the floor to the ceiling on a wall on the enclosed, second-floor patio.
“We come out here quite a bit,” Beshears said.
Light streams into the space from the windows and through slats in the ceiling. Mallett painted the sky on the mural teal with a yellow sun. The painting depicts a church with its stained-glass windows, along with some downtown staples, including the post office and Bob’s Grill. A bus figures prominently in the scene, too.
Beshears said she asked Mallett to paint a bus because the patients often talk about waiting for the bus or buying a bus ticket. Nearby patio furniture allows the patients to sit and relax — or wait for the bus, Beshears said, sitting down on a wicker couch situated in front of the wall.
Mallett said she learned some things when she was painting the mural that she wouldn’t have considered. For example, she didn’t paint a bench on the wall, lest the patients get confused and try to sit on it.
“I want it to be their mural and something they enjoy seeing,” Mallett said. “It’s obviously — I don’t want to say cartoonish — but we wanted it to look realistic, yet be fun.”
Beshears said Mallett was open to suggestions regarding the mural.
“We’d say, ‘Let’s change the post office to look like this, or add these words,’” Beshears said. “She was always ready and willing to do it; I felt like it was a team, always.”
The exit doors of the unit are now hard to recognize. Mallett painted a garden scene on them, with a tall white picket fence. She used the silver push bar on the door as a ledge for the pots of painted flowers.
Mallett said she enjoyed working around the staff and patients in the unit. She often arrived at night, when there was less traffic in and out. “I loved them coming out and watching me paint,” Mallett said.
She said some of the patients would reminisce as she worked.
“I would be there painting, and they were talking about going down to the river and washing their clothes. One lady, … she would talk a lot about Conway and different things, Mallett said.
“It was wonderful; I was so impressed,” she said of the experience.
Beshears said she is happy with the finished project.
“It is so beautiful; she did a great job,” Beshears said. “Everybody loves it. It’s made this whole unit look better, the doors especially. It’s just a happy scene.”
Beshears said the project has had the calming effect on the patients that she’d hoped for, too.
“We have found it is working for a lot of patients,” she said.
Senior writer Tammy Keith can be reached at (501) 327-0370 or tkeith@arkansasonline.com.