BY: LISA CUMMING
Having a parent or a grandparent with dementia is like watching a group of workers tear down your childhood house. Demolition starts slowly and bricks are carefully removed. Once the bones of the building begin to show excavators come chugging through to rip out larger chunks of the frame. It ends with the loud bang of a wrecking ball and rubble as a reminder of what once was.
Dementia is progressive with symptoms that start out as mild, but become increasingly devastating. The best thing to do for loved ones diagnosed with dementia is to make sure they are as safe as possible. Unfortunately this leaves most patients with very limited options: strict-care seniors homes or hospitals.
Currently, Alzheimers has a higher annual death toll than breast cancer and prostate cancer combined and cannot be slowed, or prevented. In 2015, Alzheimers care will cost the United States 226 billion dollars and it is estimated that the cost could rise to one trillion dollars by 2050 according to 2015 statistics released by the Alzheimers Association. Knowing that by 2030, 72 million baby boomers will be at risk of Alzheimers, it might be time to reconsider our approach to long-term care, which can have the latent effect of dehumanizing patients.
A small living community in the Netherlands has been created as an alternative to the current care model for those living with dementia. The community, Hogewey, is a little bubble of peace and security for the 152 elderly residents with dementia who live there. Nestled in the outskirts of Amsterdam, architects worked with Yvonne van Amerongen, a caregiver with decades of experience working with dementia patients, to design living spaces with dementia sufferers specifically in mind. You will not find skyscrapers or “big anonymous buildings” for miles.
Using familiar triggers as much as possible, Hogewey residents constantly experience recognizable stimuli, which helps them avoid fear-inducing confusion and continue to be active participants in the community.
Photo by: gizmodo.com
Photo by: gizmodo.com
Facilities and homes are designed to match a familiar lifestyle. There is a choice of Goois, Homey, Christian, Artisan, Indonesian, and Cultural lifestyles. This is determined by residents choosing three core aspects of their familiar lifestyle: life, housing, and values.
Photo by: irishtimes.com
Residents are not treated as wards of the system, but rather as normal people living in a normal society. They are granted the dignity to have their own space and to live and manage aspects of their life, just like before.
Photo by: gizmodo.comxx
There are 23 different houses that are home to anywhere from six to eight people.
Photo by: gizmodo.com
Residents are trusted with regular responsibilities like cooking and cleaning, as well as grocery shopping at the local Hogeyweyk supermarket. On the surface, Dementia Village might look like any other community with parks and gardens, as well as a restaurant, bar, and theatre.
Photo by: KopArt, Amstelveen
One of the largest burdens of Dementia patients is the stigma that coats how others interpret their opinions. Often when someone is diagnosed, opinions can become largely dismissed as listeners tend to filter their thoughts through the label of insanity.
The residents don’t live in isolation and people from outside the community are encouraged to come and enjoy the facilities. Rather than segregating patients to cold, sterile, emotionless mental illness wards, this type of housing development makes a very important point about how we, as a society, cope with degenerative diseases like Dementia.
Rather than treat those who have already lived full lives as participating members of society as incapable, Hogewey offers an alternative to the “living on a leash model” by upping the level of familiarity and allowing people to continue lives of autonomy within the community.
Sources: gizmodo.com, twistedsifter.com, irishtimes.com
