University Report: Designing a Meaningful Dementia Treatment Facility

This report focuses on designing a specialized treatment facility for individuals with advanced dementia, aiming to enhance their quality of life and provide a supportive environment. The report emphasizes the limitations of conventional facilities and proposes a model inspired by the Hogeweyk Village in Amsterdam, which creates a community-like setting with everyday amenities such as shops, cafes, and recreational areas. The primary objective is to foster a sense of normalcy and reduce the stress associated with restrictive environments. The facility will employ trained caregivers who act as neighbors, promoting freedom of movement and independence through features like automated elevators and unlocked doors, while ensuring safety. By integrating cognitive and behavioral interventions, along with stimulating activities, the design seeks to mitigate the psychological effects of dementia and provide residents with a meaningful and engaging lifestyle. The report highlights the importance of creating a safe and supportive environment where patients can feel a sense of belonging and maintain their dignity.

Running head: TREATING DEMENTIA
TREATING DEMENTIA
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author Note

1TREATING DEMENTIA
Dementia can be understood as a category of symptoms due to disorders affecting
the brain (www.alz.org, 2017). The typical symptoms are loss of memory, difficulties in the
thought process, in language or problem solving abilities. This greatly affects the ability of
the individual to conduct day to day activities. Dementia can also cause changes in
behaviour, mood and personality. This is generally caused due to a decline of the normal
mental functioning due to the Detoriation of the brain caused by aging. Several different
disease can cause dementia, like Alzhimer’s disease, Lewy Body Disease, vascular dementia,
fronto-temporal dementia, head trauma, Parkinson’s disease, Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease and
Huntington’s disease. An individual with dementia, can be suffering from more than one of
these diseases. Treating dementia depends on its causality, however progressive forms of
dementia (like Alzhimer’s) have no treatment or cure to slow or stop the progression of the
disease (Rizzi, Rosset & Roriz-Cruz, 2014). However there are few medicines that can help
to manage the symptoms of advanced dementia. Cholinesterase inhibitors can also be used to
manage the symptoms of mild or moderate dementia (Hahn & Paik, 2015). However,
improvement in their conditions and quality of life can be done by proper care giving,
providing emotional support, and education and conducting programs of regular exercises
(Forbes et al., 2013). Interventions (cognitive and behavioral) can also be used to help the
patients (Huntley et al., 2015).
In the movie Age Old Friends (1989), a retirement home was shown where the
protagonists of the movie were residents. The home had strict rules for its residents, and the
surrounding was all strictly ordered. This deprived the residents of a sense of freedom, and
self dignity. This was a major problem of approach in the treatment of dementia. Since the
condition is mostly untreatable in advanced stages, it becomes necessary to allow the patients
to try to lead a normal life, providing all the help they need to perform their daily activities.
The strict ordering however also had its positive effect of timely administration of medicines,

2TREATING DEMENTIA
and participation in group activities. The spontaneity of the staff allowed timely action
whenever needed, and prevented negligence due to complacency.
Taking into considerations the complicated nature of dementia symptoms, and the
lack of treatment for its advanced stages, care must be taken to ensure the patients have a
decent quality of life, with a sense of normalcy. Generally treatment in restricted nursing
homes can be very restrictive, and can therefore be stressful for the residents. The
conventional facilities, even though properly equipped medically to deal with any
medical/clinical symptoms, are however not as well equipped to deal with the psychological
difficulties associated with dementia. The purpose of this article is to construct a design for a
treatment facility for dementia that will ensure a life with meaning and quality for the patients
suffering from dementia.
The primary objective of the facility will be to extend help and support to patients
with advanced form of dementia. This is mostly because at advanced stage, the condition
becomes untreatable, and the patients require round the clock assistance. This can be a hurdle
in regular nursing homes, or homecare facilities, and be a major challenge to deal with for the
family members (Holden & Stokes, 2017). The proposed facility will be a housing
community for the patients of advanced dementia, and employ round the clock staffs
(medical practitioners, advisors for healthy living, and social workers). The design of the
facility will be based upon the Hogeweyk Village for dementia patients in Amsterdam, and
will involve creating a living environment for the patients (Paola, 2017). The environment
will act as a community, consisting of the patient and the care givers, and the complex can
be set up as a small village with general stores, pubs, café-restaurant, movie theatres, salon,
supermarket, town square, and recreation centers (Glass, 2014).

3TREATING DEMENTIA
The aim of the facility to provide a normal mode of life for the suffering people, and
to take away the feeling of a restrictive environment associated with traditional facilities. The
doctors and caregivers will be trained to make the experience as realistic as possible,
residents can go out for shopping when they want, prepare food as they would staying
home. The facility will try to provide a new home for these people, instead of just a treatment
facility. It should be kept in mind that many of these patients will never be cured, and hence
will live the rest of his/her life in the facility. Hence, utmost care will be taken to ensure they
can have a meaningful life and that of quality. The caregivers will no longer be wearing the
regular clinical outfits, reminding the patients of closed clinics. Instead they will wear regular
cloths, and live next doors to the patients as neighbors. The doors will not need any locking
system, while still ensuring security to the residents. Additional facilities like automated
elevators can ensure that a patient would not need to remember or interact to operate the lift.
If the residents are allowed the freedom to move, go shopping, walk in the sun and involve
in group activities, they would feel less restricted, and the adverse effects of the disease on
their psychology and mood can be greatly alleviated. Similar setups in Hogeweyk have
shown positive results, with the patient eating better and living longer than patients living in
traditional setups. The residents can also get involved in musical activities, or learn musical
instruments, which can be helpful in stimulating the mind (Sapiro, Farrant & Pavlicevic,
2017).
One very common symptom of dementia is problems with short term memories,
following instructions, or remembering them (Adams, Deokar, Anderson & Edwards,
2013). This can cause serious impedance in the daily activities. Ensuring freedom of
movement to the patients can ensure the feeling of freedom, at the same time¸ being in close
proximity of caregivers all the time, can ensure they receive help urgently. Being able to go
out and travel through the village on their own, the patients can develop a sense of normalcy,

4TREATING DEMENTIA
in their rapidly detiorating mental health, and live in a stress free, helpful environment, that
can be their home (Aubrecht & Keefe, 2016). Although, comparison can be drawn on such
“artificially” created/projected sense of normalcy, as was in the case in the movie The Tuman
Show (1998), it can be stated that for patients who are already losing their grip on reality, a
fabricated reality can still keep them connected to this life, and prevent a sense of
abandonment and alienation.

5TREATING DEMENTIA
References:
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Aubrecht, K., & Keefe, J. (2016). The Becoming Subject of Dementia. Review of Disability
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Forbes, D., Thiessen, E. J., Blake, C. M., Forbes, S. C., & Forbes, S. (2013). Exercise
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Glass, A. P. (2014). Innovative Seniors Housing and Care Models: What We Can Learn from
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Hahn, S. J., & Paik, N. J. (2015). Pharmacological Treatment of Dementia. Brain &
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Huntley, J. D., Gould, R. L., Liu, K., Smith, M., & Howard, R. J. (2015). Do cognitive
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regression. BMJ open, 5(4), e005247.
Paola, S. (2017). Dementia village: A new model for living with dementia. AJP: The
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Rizzi, L., Rosset, I., & Roriz-Cruz, M. (2014). Global epidemiology of dementia:
Alzheimer’s and vascular types. BioMed research international, 2014.

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Spiro, N., Farrant, C. L., & Pavlicevic, M. (2017). Between practice, policy and politics:
Music therapy and the Dementia Strategy, 2009. Dementia, 16(3), 259-281.
www.alz.org. (2017). What Is Dementia?. Alzhimer's Association. Retrieved 7 November
2017, from https://www.alz.org/what-is-dementia.asp