Second of two parts

LITTLETON - Marjorie Bontempo was a changed woman after moving into Life Care Center of Nashoba Valley, a Littleton nursing home where the staff doesn’t believe in using antipsychotic drugs simply to calm residents.

A physician had prescribed an antipsychotic for Bontempo a year earlier, after Alzheimer’s disease had transformed her from an accomplished seamstress and demure family peacekeeper into a cantankerous, confused woman who refused to eat. The medicine eased her aggression but left her dazed, said her daughter, Patty Sinnett.

Nashoba’s nurses took Bontempo off the powerful sedative. Sinnett went to visit soon after and found her mother in the activity room watching a Clark Gable movie.

“She started explaining the whole movie to me, like a normal person would,’’ Sinnett said. “It was the first time I had had a conversation with her in a year. It was incredible.’’

The Littleton facility is one of a small but growing number of nursing homes that are treating the agitation and disruptive behavior that often accompany dementia without resorting to antipsychotics.

Instead, Life Care Center and similar homes try to tailor care to each resident, to make it familiar and comforting. Staffers comb residents’ pasts to learn their preferences, hobbies, and accomplishments, tapping bedrock emotions that endure long after memory fades.

The Globe reported Sunday that many homes still rely heavily on antipsychotics to deal with aggressive residents, though most of these residents do not have conditions that nursing home regulators say warrant use of the drugs. And federal authorities have warned of sometimes lethal side effects when antipsychotics are taken by elderly dementia patients.