Thanks for watching! This video is part of By Design, our series about the intersection of design and technology. For more videos like this, from playgrounds to font decisions, check out the playlist here: bit.ly/3PAav9U
a fun fact that was not mentioned in this video, is that people in these places get an image of their old front door put on their new front door, making it easy for them to remember their front door and making it possible to find your house more easily
@@theparanoidandroid3583 pretty sure they mean their old houses front door, so that they can recognize the old stimuli and associate it with where they live
My mum was a dementia nurse for 15 years in a care home - she had the idea of turning the lounge area into an old-timey "train station", with a mock-up of the inside of a train, where the windows were TV screens that showed the world going by. At first I thought it seemed pretty patronising, but once, I visited her at work and I saw the older people with dementia using it, and they were like different people, happier I guess. I think people really underestimate quite how much dementia causes you to lose your grip on reality, and how something nostalgic like that can really ground you again, if only for a moment.
It truly is profound to actually observe just how lost many of the unfortunate people are. I work in a hospital and regularly see and interact with patients that have dementia. It can be really difficult. Imagine how you would react if a stranger showed up in your bedroom at night? Many of these patients don’t know they are in the hospital and they think I am invading their bedroom. You can imagine how difficult it can be to gain trust in such a scenario.
I watched this video of an old man with dementia, given headphones and given the music he's always loved for years to listen to, and he went from completely unresponsive, to almost like completely normal again! It was amazing! Even for just a couple minutes his daughter said it was like he was back again and I sincerely think that environments where they can ground themselves with familiar sights and sounds and experiences, in a safe environment, are absolutely ideal!
Something important about designing these is to not have any deadends. This means people could walk for hours but never get stuck anywhere and don't feel like they are stuck in such facility. Most of the time, there is a 'main street' running in a circle in these, so nobody can get lost.
I looked back at the map to see if this was covered, and yes it looks like that's another reason why each building is pushed against a corner of the space.
@@robinlillian9471 Difference is intent I think. The reason it's creepy in the Truman Show is that it's all to exploit Truman, and turn his life into our entertainment. Dementia villages like these do it out of genuine care and respect for the people living there.
I love how he said “if you design for normal people, you design for people with dementia”. I am disabled and find this to be true for abled people in terms of living spaces; walkable, non-car-reliant cities benefit and improve the lives of EVERYONE, abled and disabled.
@@cheshirealice8461 🤔Unless I'm misunderstanding your phrasing (maybe I am), I'm thinking that Penn and Teller disproved this when they took that guy in the iron lung around trying to get into various businesses. While it's certainly useful and admirable to provide access for as many people as possible, it's unreasonable to judge by the fact that some people will definitively not be able to use a particular design. Visual designs can't be used by the (completely) blind, but can still be great designs that guide the user to precisely what they're hoping to achieve. An auditory experience with great sound design can't be used or enjoyed by the (completely) deaf, but can still be a great design that pulls you into the experience -- there are even games played entirely through sound, no visuals. Game controllers can't be used by the tetraplegic, but they can still be great controller designs for maximum comfort/ergonomics and intuitive user-centered button placement. The fact that a group of people cannot use a design doesn't make the design useless or worthless.
@@Arkylie Your is a great argument. As an architect and urban planner I always jump between what is needed, what is possible, what is easiest when concocting a solution to a problem. What you said made me think about public transportation, where the first directive is to facilitate urban mobility for everyone... that could walk, because there are tons of stairs and gaps and big steps and mechanical checkpoints between the various elements of a public transportation chain. Now, as a service is absolutely needed without a doubt facilitating the life of billions. It is by design doing its job very well, BUT could we do it better including people with different mobility issues? could we improve it so that we even cover those exceptions WITHOUT compromising the overall efficiency? that is the challenge ongoing all over the world regarding the accessibility of public transportation (or any public service honestly). But that is not just a matter of "sensibility", it is a matter of practicality and feasibility. What I'm trying to say is that it is almost always wrong to start designing by covering for all the exceptions because you risk condemning the project to failure by not finding the absolute perfect solution from the get go, spoiler: it does not exist. But to go back and improve, perfect, is a sign of society that is not only evolving and bettering itself, but it also rich and resourceful enough to allow for effort to be spent to just provide inclusivity.
Interesting to me how 99% of this applies to video game design. Avoid things people will misinterpret, make important things brightly/contrastingly colored, put lots of unique landmarks and divide the world into tiny, visually/aesthetically distinct zones for exploration sessions that will last 1-2 hours at a time.
its funny too because some of the best programs often have built-in accessibility not even because whoever made it thought the end-user would need it, but because the creator needed it themselves i think it really outlines how when society functions in the name of cost-cutting, not even the people who are saving the money are better for it imagine how much more free we could be as people if not for our fear and greed
as a UX/UI Designer for a gaming studio - yeah, we work on the same basic principles, such is the beautiful nature of antropocentric design. the world would benefit a lot if UX was more of a concern not only for IT but for everyday design, to make everything less confusing and more intuitive
I feel like the number of visitors would go up. I hate care facilities and hate going to them but if I could visit my loved one in something that doesn’t smell and feel like death, I would go all the time. That’s years I would get to spend with my family again
Indeed but I do wish they had put that price tag up against what a traditional facility is charging as I am sure those amounts are probably not all that different. The fact is that 24/7 care is expensive to provide, after all you do need well trained staff working difficult shift patterns at unsociable hours. Not sure this facility model would change that all that much compared to more traditional facilities.
@@seraphina985 exactly!! On top of the hidden costs associated with the traditional nursing home environment - hospitalization for pneumonia related to aspiration or limited mobility costs $80,000 just for ONE hospitalization, but having an active lifestyle and a focus on maintaining function will prevent that.
@@seraphina985 I wonder how much of that price tag was because of it’s location. Langley might not be as expensive as Vancouver, but BC is expensive to buy land/own land.
I actually visited one of these sites a few years ago in the Netherlands. It’s really uplifting to see how much they are willing to take care of those who can’t take care of themselves.
It does also help that Dutch health care isn’t for predatory money makers. Yes, some options and treatments are still not cheap, plentiful or the best.. But the strict(er) protective public laws and country wide socialized healthcare funding aspect makes it available for people that couldn’t otherwise.
@@wasteyourtime4961 agreed, it's unfortunate people would have to sacrifice many things for adequate health care. It's sad how many people are forgotten or exploited once they are unable to properly care for themselves or have the family/ financial means to do so :(
@@Soka_Lakota113 Yeah, I mean it was probably the nicest country I’ve ever been to. The homeless are off the street, less city noise since so many people ride around on bikes, and had well stocked shelters for the Syrian refugees (played ping pong with some of them). I’m not saying the country has 0 problems, but it’s nice to see a shining example of human cooperation resulting in such a good outcome.
The last bit is absolutely true. So many of the cities in the US are inhospitable to even regular people, let alone those who suffer from some mental or physical ailment. We need more tight knit walk-able hubs!
my grandma was in a nursing home, but not like a hospital. it had a dining table, other residents, couches, tvs, everyone had their own room, and the nurses there were great. for the bedridden patients (like how my great grandma was) they gave them those robotic cats so they had a companion. it didd break my heart when my grandma wasn't able to distinguish her from a real cat. she would hallucinate sassy (the cat) running around the room, andat night she said that she heard sassy jumping around. sorry if i kinda jabbered on, its a habit. she was a great grandma.
I'm sure that sassy was a lovely companion for your grandma. I'm sure it broke your heart, but just know that the familiarity of having an animal in her space likely grounded your grandma and helped her feel safe.
i'm sorry that her hallucinating the cat broke your heart, but I imagine that she really enjoyed having the cat around, even if it was only real to her.
A little jabbering on hallucinating: There is no "spirit" in a materialistic world view. No ghost. But there is memory, and shared experience... And to your mother, to whom Sassy was as real as anything, what could possibly be said to be the difference between a hallucination and the spirit of her cat coming back to keep her safe in her last days? She summoned that cat with thoughts just how one might believe you could with magic. In other cultures hallucinating is simply accepted as visions. They are not seen as always correct but they are still seen as normal. They don't have schizophrenia in such places like we do in the US, it's either non existent or completely different... Even with the same "Symptoms". The difference is in whether we saw that ghostly cat as a guardian or a symptom. Maybe it can give you a little peace to know that.
My grandmother lived in this exact facility, granted it was 12 years ago but it was an amazing place for her to live. I'm glad they're getting recognition for their amazing work!
As he said at the end, people with dementia are still people - even if there is proven to be no benefits to this model over a carehome, I would much prefer to have dignity in my final days than live in a clinical trap. Love all the incredible ideas the Netherlands come up with.
I agree. Ill or not, Alzheimer's or not, a person is still a person and someone's humanity shouldn't depend strictly on work ability. I don't want to sit in a sterile white room, rotting away, with corrupt doctors/nurses (which there are many in elder care facilities), I want to still live
I'm sure even clinical facilities in the Netherlands are much better than in the US. (ie. more humanity, more freedom, more exercise, more attention, less overmedicating, etc.) So comparing this to a carehome in the Netherlands in deaths might not be very useful. However, comparing it to US nursing homes would probably be very useful, but it'd probably be said that there are too many compounding variables and so the data would only really be known among "experts."
My grandma in Japan has dementia and needs 24/7 care. Seeing her in such a state makes me really sad. This is a beautiful idea and uplifting video. Thank you
Mine is the same. I'd be so happy knowing she can walk around and see nature and other people on her own, almost experience freedom again. This illness takes so much from people, it is awful.
Same here. I have visited her at her care home, and I can tell that she is struggling with the fact that it is just so monotonous, with every day being the exact same, always being around the same people, and being confined to just a building.
I've worked in a nursing home through high school and college. While I can't say it was the worst place for dementia patients, it certainly did not work well for all of them. One patient once tried to wedge herself through the door begging to go outside with me and I even had patients confide in me that they hated being institutionalized, they missed being able to live a normal life, being part of a real community, and being able to come and go as they pleased. This concept is probably the closest thing possible to a normal life a dementia patient could ever have.
Nursing homes are fictional but so are colleges. You worked in a place [marketed] as a nursing home while attending a place [marketed] as a college? You lie about humans being tortured and/or killed with medical fiction and/or are tortured into appearing/sounding like you possibly could be? Others youre forced to interact with as well?
Dementia awareness is HUGE in the Netherlands. There’s government supported courses on how to help someone with dementia if they’re lost for example. The Netherlands is what we in Dutch call a “care state”. The state/government has to help everyone, especially people who are more vulnerable.
@@dylanswift5185 "over there" tells me everything i need to be honest. You clearly have no clue what you're talking about. The Dutch goverment gives you a monthly allowance for every child under 18 you have. Theres courses on all kinds of child related stuff, government subsardised if i recall correctly. I know all that and im not even Dutch, just a neighbor who visits frequently 🧍
@@Den-dd5pp hes still not wrong tho.. just like the rest of western europe, not enough kids are being born and thats why our countries rely on immigration so much and why native europeans will be a minority in western europe in a couple of decades.
@@neamhdhlisteanach6720 in the USA, mothers have 6 weeks after birth. 6 weeks. Thats laughable. Birth rates go down when women get acess to good education, enabling them to make an informed decision about having kids. Oh, also basic rights and acsess to contraceptoon i guess. Thats the reason we have less kids. No arranged marriages at like, age 14(or 16, for most of the US :D) etc. So no, government is not at fault for the birthrates, its those pesky modern ideals that make women people not property!
A relative of mine used to get agressive, violent and angry when she would encounter a locked door in the institution she was in. She couldn't understand why there would be a locked room in what she understood to be 'her home', this would take a lot of calming down and management, only for her to discover another locked door, and kick off again. I love these village based models as they allow autonomy for residents, and have an individual exoerience. Just because someone has a brain disease doesn't mean they arent entitled to the very best care. I hope the govt spends far more on these establishments in the future
In the US they'd give her medication to sedate her and eventually tie her up to the bed reducing her physical activity and leading to more illness which would be responded to by giving her even more medication because of lack of funding and understaffing.
As a Gen Z, I often tell people I'd rather consider ethunasia over a nursing home, but this alternative really brings hope to what I'd consider as very grim and dark options our aged currently have. I hope to see these options scale up, a rare example of how economies of scale will directly make quality of life better.
This video shows an optimistic model of how end-of-life care can be provided, but it is incredibly expensive. As a 24-year-old, when I'm old and beginning to lose pieces of myself, I would like to throw a party of sorts with my family and then end my life in peace in the following week. I think a decisive end like that could be a huge gift to my family.
My father has dementia and Parkinsons and we're doing everything we can to keep him home in our care. The nursing homes I've seen seems like a horrible place to live. My dad deserves a lot better than that. I'm afraid there will come a time where his condition will advance beyond what my mom, my sister and I can handle. If I could afford a place like a dementia village I'd try that before I would consider a nursing home. Watching someone who was so full of life, so kind, so intelligent lose themselves right in front of you is beyond depressing. I wish we had a cure. No one deserves to live their final days in that condition. 😔
my dad also had Parkinsons ten yrs ago, and around five yrs ago he developed dementia, esp when he's on his meds... im relieved to hear someone has the same experience as my family.... it's been very hard but now i think we're doing better
@@hanpogee2356 Thank you. I know there's a lot of value in knowing there are other people experiencing the same thing you are, so I really appreciate your comment. I'm also encouraged by your progress. I hope that happens for my family as well. Everyday I wake up and ask myself if I'm making the right decisions. Am I taking him to see the right doctors. Are his meds helping at all. Am I doing enough to take some of the stress away from my mother. Is she sacrificing her health to take care of him. Are we being too protective of him by not talking about the extent of his condition to his former colleagues, extended family, and those who attended his church. Did your family worry about things like that too?
I’m sorry to hear about your father. We just had to make the decision to move my mother into a care facility for Alzheimer’s in the last six months. I don’t know where in the world you are, but I hope you find somewhere you’re comfortable having your father be. My thoughts are with you and your family.
My grandmother had dementia and when her caretaker who was my grandfather (her husband) passed unexpectedly we had to scramble to get her into a memory care facility in the US. The first place she was in temporarily was so sad, I could see her spirit drain but after about a year we were able to get her into a "village" and the quality of life difference is nothing short of ASTOUNDING! She could function in a way that was familiar and comfortable to her and not be in a foreign hospital setting. The abrupt change from a home where they are familiar, to a clinical setting must be very disorienting and upsetting to these people. That side of my family had mental health issues and memory loss starts early, so I know it will happen to me to some extent and I only hope I can have people take care of me as well as in this Hogeweyk.
How was it cost wise though? When my "functionally what I call grandma" got too unwell for us to care for her, her family could barely afford normal nursing homes, a village like this sounds like it'd cost multiple times as much.
I'm glad you brought up the clinical nature of most nursing homes, my Grandma thought she was in a hospital because she was sick, not exactly wrong, but saddening.
I am absolutely terrified of dementia so I'm glad there are people and places dedicated to taking care of those suffering from this disease, and helping minimise the impact of it.
@@JustTheTruth-Please absolutely not true. We The People can vote to make it a Constitutional Right. and since the huge majority of people are likely to go bananas before dying, there's a very strong chance that an amendment level consensus can be achieved.
I'm no psychologist or doctor but I'd reckon that a nursing home fails because it ultimately strips people of their humanity. My Nana went to a nursing home when she was elderly and unable to be cared for. Many of the people there were scared, confused, and begged to go home. No wonder they deteriorate quickly, they're being locked away in a depressing hospital. Care villages are a home for the elderly to live and feel like people. This needs to be implemented no matter the cost, all over. Also implemented for mentally ill and disabled pre-retirement people too!
It's true that a nursing home pretty much always is a bad environment - sometimes even operated under truly terrific circumstances. But the things you describe (scared, confused and begging to go home) unfortunately are also part of dementia no matter how great the environment is. It would happen at home too, even the begging to go "home". We also have no way to truly medically treat it and stop the deterioration that is part of the illness. There are only some drugs that can often slow it down a bit but it is not permanent and for some people it doesn't work at all. Of course that doesn't mean that the environment can't have an exacerbating or protective effect and there should absolutely be more thought and resources put into how we care for our elderly. Just wanted to put what you saw in the nursing home a bit more into perspective of the unfortunate realities of the severe illness that is dementia.
I deffinitelly agree. My grandmother was mentally healthy when she had an accident and broke a vertebra (part of her spine). She deteriorated very quickly in the hospital, lost her connection to reality and deveoped severe symptoms of dementia in a week. She became physically healthy soon, but she could not get back home because she needed 24hour care which our family could not provide. She stayed in the hospital and died half a year later.
Our grandfather lived in an assisted living community, and he was great until COVID lockdown. When we had a zoom meet with him he barely looked alive - the isolation and loss of freedom was horrible on him. We pulled him out and he sprung right back up for another 4 months at home, was even able to travel a bit. It was a lot of work (24h care split between a family of 5, someone was always with him) but a very unique experience and something I cherish.
"Also implemented for mentally ill and disabled pre-retirement people too!" - That'd be me, and I'd like to note that "pre-retirement" is an age thing more than an ability thing when you're permanently disabled. Retirement in the US is expected at or around 65, especially if someone is planning to end up on social security benefits, because that's roughly when a normal person qualifies it. Someone like me who gets disability before 65 is essentially retired, but living about 20% below poverty level if all they are getting is disability. I've been on disability for about a decade and I'm 44. Living in something like a facility featured in this video would be amazing. I'm lucky to have a housing voucher, but I've also moved more times than is sane with that voucher because of horrible landlords. I've also spent a couple short stints in hospital psych wards and they're so bad you want to pretend you're okay just to get back out; I've also spent about 45 days in a nursing home learning to walk again due to a severe leg injury, and that experience was a nightmare. If it wasn't for a tablet I was able to purchase with an employee laptop, being able to call a friend from my room via landline, and a nurse-assisted trip home in the middle of my stay to grab a portable PsOne, games, and art stuff, I think I would have left that building with a whole new set of neuroses, and I don't need any more problems with my brainspace.
Shoutout to the audio engineer in this. Too often Skype or Zoom interviews record the audio from the call itself, leading to awful room acoustics, low quality microphone, and digital artefacts, etc. Here it sounds like the interviewee is in the same room-whether a lavalier is used is unclear to me, but at the very least the audio is recorded locally and edited to match the visuals. You guys did it right, an example to be followed.
My grandmother had Alzheimer's and at the late stage of the desease, she was locked in a specialized institution on a miniature space of one room and one corridor. There was a restaurant and a garden which we could visited with her but she was not allowed to go there herself. It was terrifying for me to see how desperately a human life could end. This dementia villages look much better, allowing people to live a relatively normal life and make their own choices. Even the freedom to decide to choose between beign inside and being outside can make a huge difference for the quality of life. My number one hope is a discovery of cure for dementia but if it doesnot occure, these villages can serve a crutial role of keeping our future dignity.
My grandpa had dementia for the last 5 years of his life. It was really sad to see his rapid decline. I’m glad that this initiative is taking place. We need social connections 🙏
No not really. Some people live like hermits. They may be socially awkward but dementia is about the health and age of the brain. Social connections don't hurt and they may help.
my grandpa just started showing symptoms a few months ago and already he has forgotten my name/thinks I am my mom. It’s so sad, especially because he’s only 75 years old and one of the smartest people i’ve ever met (hes a renowned doctor who has saved thousands of peoples lives with breakthrough research on heart attacks, and public health/education!.) It’s absolutely heartbreaking and I am so so sorry you also have had to deal with this.. I hope there will be a cure soon
I'm just imagining this for people with Down Syndrome or who need some level of full time care their entire lives, and how amazing this could be for them. I love this so much.
I wouldn't do this for down syndrome, because while they might have a lower IQ they still have a full conscience. They might not be as smart as neurotypical individuals are, but they are still fully there. Better care would be great though, I just don't think a full village is necessary, but I could see it being a cool thing.
That’s part of the point, good design works well for every human, independent of the individual’s limitations. And today’s cities are not built for humans. Netherlands is a great exception, with plenty of livable cities. As said in the video, that neighborhood reflects many typical Dutch village design.
I wish these kinds of places were more common. My grandma lived in a typical nursing home. For the first ten or more years she was just in assisted living and that was better. Eventually though she had to be moved to the dementia unit which was a locked basement. She was much sharper at first than anyone else down there but I think once she was downstairs she went downhill a lot faster. She called it “the facility”.
Despite the best of 'intentions', unfortunately the reality is that the great majority of *_all_* care facilities prioritize _'compliance'_ uber alles.
Wish my grandparent's got this level of care and attention. I remember walking into the dementia care home and it was almost like silent hill. People surrounded by unfriendly faces ordering them around through this hospital like maze, people freaking out constantly and vacant people just wandering hoping you are someone they know. Bringing them back into this natural (although safe) environment would have been fantastic for them, and for the visitors.
Strangely reminds me of the sense of community and freedom of living on a university campus. I think everyone needs that access to the spectrum of social interaction. What a great design and I'm so glad people are putting more care into elderly care
My friend from the Netherlands tells me how much comfort it brings her knowing her parents will have quality elder care at no cost to her or her parents. I wish this design were feasible in the US. I could not see the government reimbursing this design under our current system, many of these amenities would either be cut or charged to the patient in our for-profit system.
@@user-be1jx7ty7n in the US, when you can’t afford your elder care health costs the person has to “spend down” (liquidate any remaining assets/resources/wealth) to qualify for Medicaid assistance under the Medicare program. The health care and nursing home industries take people for all their worth and leave the family with nothing left. And since medical care costs are unregulated by the government this is very common here.
@@user-be1jx7ty7n That is nonsense. The insurers and providers are private, but the universal healthcare system is regulated by that government. So just like Medicare, everyone can have access to affordable health care, independent of their health or background. The prices are set, and the government dictates what needs to be covered. And low income individuals can have their premium reimbursed during tax returns. Many European countries have similar systems. In contrast others use a completely state owned health system. Both can work great. Keep in mind that the Dutch government still funds the system. The premiums people pay are not enough to fund the whole system. For higher income persons you also need to pay an additional tax for the healthcare. Forgot the name of it, should be 2% or 3%.
@@john_smith_john The US is the richest country to ever exist on planet earth lol. Also, are basic amenities not scalable? Because Germany is also pretty good at this with a population of over 80 million.
Thanks for the compliment, but don't give us too much credit. We're slowly but surely slipping towards a more Anerican mindset when it comes to concrete and cutting down trees in cities and charging for necessary things and so on.
As someone who worked as a healthcare assistant in a care home specialising in Alzheimer's patients, I can see how much these changes would improve quality of life. My biggest concern with the home I worked in was always the mental health of our residents, and while a rebuild into a village like this wasn't possible, we tried to take as much inspiration as possible from them. I'm glad more is being done to normalise this type of care, and I hope there's either a cure or a drastic improvement in current treatments developed soon. These people deserve so much more.
I absolutely love this, such a beautiful way to help ease the struggle of dementia patients. That being said, my fear of forgetting is not lessened at all and once I start forgetting loved ones I’m clocking out permanently.
I really like the idea of "Dementia Villages" or more plainly put, long term care communities. In Canada we have some facilities like this but most elderly people get put into old fashion nursing homes that aren't designed to treat specialized illnesses like dementia and alzheimers. One thing I wish they had addressed in the video is the cost difference between the two models of care and the accessibility of the village model. Elderly care is already expensive in North America and is barely subsidized by the government. While I see the advantages to a village style model it will be almost exclusively a rich person only luxury here for the forseable future.
We have places like this in Florida, not to the extent of the dementia villages in some ways, but you certainly are right: they are incredibly expensive
It was honestly really difficult to walk into the care home for my grandpa when he had dementia. Everyone there were not allowed to leave that section of the hospital unless they are being looked after. And most times I would visit him and he would talk about "planning his escape." He wanted his car, and his own house even though he was losing his memory. It didn't feel like he had any freedom and I can only imagine what my grandpa could have done in one of these. I wish he could have felt more in control of his own surroundings.
The problem is that if your grandpa did escape and leave and something happened to him, the home would be liable. As it is, many nursing homes are facing a staff shortage BECAUSE they are severely underpaid in comparison to the work they put in (I've tried to care for my dad with my mom 24/7, it was soul-crushing as you can't do anything else) and there's a very high burnout and turnover rate among carers. Most ex-carers I know say they'd rather work in ANY field that isn't care work ever again, they'd take retail over a care job in a blink. Now, nursing homes or aid homes are expensive as is in spite of carers being paid peanuts (because you need a lot of those to care for patients), imagine how much more expensive it would be if they were paid a proper wage. Even if someone made the investment of the village, the issue is still that these people are going to need an army of carers to live.
@@irondragonmaiden I completely agree with your point and I don’t think these two issues are the same. I was sharing a personal story about my family and no where did I mention that the healthcare workers were “bad.” My comment is about a FUTURE issue with taking care of dementia patients in a more HUMANE manner. The issue you brought up is a CURRENT issue. Where no one (especially healthcare workers) get fair wages. So I kinda see these as two topics to talk about. Obviously they’re somewhat related but one is about treating our sick family with care and other is treating our workers with care. Both matter. And sadly is wasn’t the hospital that wouldn’t let my grandpa leave, it was a small corridor inside the hospital where elders with dementia would sit, for the whole day and do nothing. I’m not claiming the health workers are to blame but rather the corporations that don’t care about anything unless it affects them directly.
My grandma is starting to show stronger signs of dementia, this is such a positive view and it actually gives a useful insight on what can be better for them. Unfortunately we do not have such facilities where we live, we can start accommodating her in a more humane and better design way ourselves.
I'm really happy that this exists. There is a man in my neighbourhood with dementia and he often goes outside his house to take a walk around the street. He usually sticks to the same route which is probably a good sign that he remembers how to do some things, but sometimes he gets into people's gardens and gets lost. Everyone on my street knows him and helps him but some people aren't so lucky... I hope more places like this can be built so no one is alone with this anymore
I lost my Grandmother here in the home on Christmas day. I'm 36 taking care of her and going through that was the hardest thing I've ever done in my life and I have been through a lot. My prayers go out to all going through the same.
this makes me so hopeful and excited to see, i am eager to find out how the research/long-term observation supports this style of care! when my grandmother was in her last few years of dementia, she was considered a "high flight risk" because of how often she wanted to get outside and walk. our brief conversations with her over time revealed, that she was just trying to walk to the store up the street like normal for a coffee, as she had done every day for 20 years prior. if she had had a safe environment to freely navigate her area and make autonomous decisions, she likely would have had a much easier last few years with fewer conflicts. i hope these facilities can continue to provide that to other folks with dementia in the future!
Yes, now my father is in a secure village he can only do small walks in the yard or long walks when his wife escorts him, so he has become unfit and overweight.
Working in both primary school and nursing homes during my life, I still say they are very similar in how they treat individuals (in this case children and the elderly) as homogeneous, mostly due to low staff ratios. It is a sad state of affairs for those not able to contribute to capitalism and therefore deemed unworthy by our society.
My great grandmother had dementia, and when put into a nursing home for it, her condition immediately declined. The hospital environment was so foreign and standardized that she almost instantly began forgetting things, and, not long after, her family and friends. It was really saddening to see, and I hope advancements like these will help ease memory loss for people who struggle with it.
The founder of this village is the type that gets to heaven without judgment. God bless you sir for such a forward thinking mindset that helps the elderly. If more people take your idea and apply it else where, this world would be a better place
If you work in a nursing home then you should be familiar with what Medicare does and doesn't cover. Obviously the US won't implement this level of care.
Yeah. Sometimes you get a weird feeling with videos like this. It's nice to see people being cared for but bitter sweet considering all the young people who work full time and can't afford to even dream of this kind of lifestyle.
This is great. It treats people with the dignity they deserve. Even in my mid-30s without dementia, I'd love to live in a place like this, with everything you need so conveniently located in a peaceful environment!
This is beautiful, one of my biggest fears about growing older is loosing memories and being in that confused helpless state. Knowing that people are working towards a better version of care for those who can’t help them self but also still give them that freedom of choice is so important.
This idea is so well-intentioned, so humanitarian, and has proven to be so effective... that it's pretty much guaranteed we'll *never* see anything even remotely like this in the US.
Only place where I heard about this kind of places is netherlands and one Asian country Otherwise eldercare getting more and more a super market mentality where everything needs to be done fast
There are dementia care facilities that have a lot of natural light, courtyard spaces but they're also extremely expensive. And I wouldn't say it's anywhere near the scale of this where it's an actual little town.
I’m not expecting this anytime in the US unfortunately. But with unions on the rise and people slowly banding together to take their lives back, one could hope
To me, of the saddest things about dementia has always been that their loved ones think they’ve lost them far before they actually have. Even if someone is disoriented or has severe memory issues, they’re still a person first and a patient second. If I were diagnosed, I wouldn’t just be afraid of forgetting my life, but also of my loved ones forgetting me before I’ve forgotten them. It’s so comforting to see such a tender and human approach to treatment
This is so great. I can imagine being confused all the time, and just having people who care about you and your quality of life must be a HUGE thing for these people. Society can't just be comfort for those at their peak and extreme anxiety for everyone else.
My Granny suffered from dementia and was a very active person before her diagnosis. As her care moved to needing more help, the facility didn't always know the best way to cope (for instance, she would constantly walk the halls, something she used to do around town daily). They were always afraid she would walk off and get lost. These villages are something I wish we had access to for her, but don't exist anywhere near us. They would have kept up her standard of living far longer.
This is a really weird take away, I'll admit. But the Dutch are building better nursing homes as neighborhoods than what the US has been and allows to be neighborhoods as actually neighborhoods. We have a lot to learn from these people!
This reminds me of when I did nursing. We looked at more "open" models of care, in which clients could do activities like gardening, cooking (and being allowed to use knives) and it sounded so much nicer than the dank and sad place I volunteered in - where each client got a room and that was it
Just from watching this video I can imagine that additionally to the benefits for the residents, surely the people working in these palces have a nicer time working than those in traditional institutions for similar purposes, another important advantage.
5:28 Thats the same amount my family has to pay to keep my grandma in a care facility without this design. Thats a absolutly resonable price for such a village, I have a hard time understanding how funding for those villages is concieved so high while a nursing home costs the same
People so often forget how much the feeling of autonomy plays into our subjective quality of life, places like this serve as a reminder of that and hopefully also as model for the future of nursing homes.
@@Flarflenugen thanks for your comment, I agree that surely there must be some memory of the family locked deep away inside, there just wasn't any way to reach those memories
I love this concept so much. Dementia is literally one of the most evil things that can happen to a person, and people with dementia deserve the most humane life humanly possible. This seems like a great way to provide just that.
This kind of village should be made more for just old people in general. My grandma has trouble to go grocery shopping because she isn't as mobile and thus streets and sidewalks are a struggle for her. Something enclosed with everything you need inside is all she'd need
While this seems like a great idea, the big caveat is the cost of these homes. Specialized dementia care is really expensive, since as you see in the video, people have very particular needs. So unfortunately, until those homes aren't funded through public health care (which they usually aren't) they dont represent a viable option for the vast majority of people and families.
Except going to the moon is a great selling point for those who vote, but dementia treatment is not something that gets u vote. If US doesn’t even have universal health care for even base things, what chances will be there for people support such “extravagant spending”? They much rather spend on more guns. Shrug,
As someone whose mum is starting to get extremely bad dementia at an extremely young age (65) this vide brought me to tears. I wish we had stuff like this in Australia. Most of our nursing homes here are full of people that don't really care. I imagine the dementia sections are worse. Most of the carers working in nursing homes are just using that as their job whilst they pursue their Bachelor of Nursing.
"dozens of dementia villages have opened across the globe" - I doubt we'll get anything like that here in the US. Usually if there's any great new concept involving public planning, infrastructure, or public health, we're typically behind Western Europe and East Asia on that front.
USA version of it would be suburb style with giant street for cars and a big wall around to keep the patients in. USA has the worst city design and planning I've seen in my life.
This is so nice. If patients can move to a "dementia village" in the early stages of dementia maybe they will remember why they are there and won't be scared every single day
So how about spouses? My Grandma lost 7 years of her life just sitting in a nursing home with her husband of 50 years. She would have LOVED to have been able to live in the same place as him & visit those shops etc & also have the ability to go on outings to regular shops etc (as she did in the later years of her life after he had died & her health had deteriorated to the point that she couldn't drive anymore) as well as have some of her own belongings there & do craft work etc while sitting with him, without having to bring huge bags of stuff with her & being incredibly limited in what was possible. Eventually btw someone convinced her she needed to take her life back & she went on a speciality bus trip for the elderly for 2 weeks & her husband was dead within weeks of that. Even though he had really not communicated with her for years, he had clearly understood she was there & when she vanished from his side for 2 weeks, he must have thought she had died & so he gave up living too to join her I guess. Imagine if the villages could give spouses quality of life, without having to leave their spouse too! (I don't know if they do or not, but it wasn't mentioned)
My grandfather passed away from Alzheimer's last year, It's a horrible thing to see your loved ones wither away and the worse part not being able to help, Hopefully these efforts succeed and ensure a better life for the ones who need it the most.
Probs a huge thing to help the ppl w dementia feel safer and happier is making a more familiar space. He mentioned that more recent memories fade first - so they won’t know why they live in an institution or how they got there, or even that they live in an institution at all. But they’ll still remember, at least to some extent, the way things work in the “normal” world. It was really genius to design the layout of the space around common layouts in Dutch cities. If their memories from young adulthood or teenagedom are more intact, then mimicking what they would’ve known then probably helps them feel at home, and safe, rather than like they’ve woken up on an alien spaceship with no idea how they got there.
It's sad that funding for this is so low. Not the same parallel, but I spent time in a psychiatric hospital and I wouldn't be surprised that someone with dementia in a similar "hospital" environment would feel scared or confused by their surroundings - it's an alienating place to be in. Hope this model continues, and proves very beneficial to those who need it most.
@ghost mall afaik it's available for everyone. No one pays things like this directly, well, there is a maximum of about 300€ that you have pay yourself, and after that all the costs are for the insurance. From what I understood there isn't a huge difference in how much it costs compared to regular dementia care.
I think this is so beautiful. Older people deserve so much better than the experience they have in traditional nursing homes. There final years shouldn’t have them treated like prisoners, they deserve to live life to the fullest.
God I wish they had this where I live in the uk, my great aunt is currently begging to get out of hospital, to go home, instead she’s going to get out of hospital and go straight to a nursing home.
Wow! I am in awe... This was absolutely amazing! Bless these founders and good luck to the great men and women living and working in such villages. Wow! Again, WOW!
As someone who is currently trying to help a relative with dementia, I thought this was an interesting idea. I looked to see if there were any villages closer to where we live. Unfortunately, there are none, but there is one in New Jersey. Looking at the website for the one in New Jersey, it looks like they have abandoned many of the concepts talked about in this video. It looks like a single large building with individual rooms just like any other assisted living facility. This makes me wonder if they have run into issues since the original facility opened, and just don't want to talk about things that have gone badly.
All 4 of my grandparents had Dimensia or Altzimers. Which I believe means, I'm guaranteed to get it. So I'm glad this level care is being made for these conditions. Broken brain has to be the worst disability a human being can endure.
Unless you plan on moving to a Scandinavian country you're not getting anything from the US. Republicans love to say prolife but actively seek your extermination.
This looks absolutely amazing! Don't think that's something every family can provide their older loved one with, but it definitely makes the life better for a person that lives there
This video is so informative and eye-opening! It's amazing to see the concept of dementia villages in action and how they provide a sense of community and purpose for those living with dementia. It's clear that the approach taken in these villages truly puts the well-being and happiness of the residents first. Thank you for sharing this inspiring and hopeful look at dementia care.
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Thanks for watching! This video is part of By Design, our series about the intersection of design and technology. For more videos like this, from playgrounds to font decisions, check out the playlist here: bit.ly/3PAav9U
Did I miss it? How is it funded in the Netherlands?
Then, when there is neuralink, such problems will no longer exist. Just have to wait!
When available! ⚡
Full video about it. (~23 min)
"CNN's World's Untold Stories: Dementia Village"
i feel like i've commented here before
Sorry to disturb your scroll, we don’t know each other but I wish you all the best in life and may all things work out in your favour ♥️
a fun fact that was not mentioned in this video, is that people in these places get an image of their old front door put on their new front door, making it easy for them to remember their front door and making it possible to find your house more easily
As in the picture was put on the inside of the door?
@@theparanoidandroid3583 outside! So they would recognize their door when they walk in the village
@@theparanoidandroid3583 pretty sure they mean their old houses front door, so that they can recognize the old stimuli and associate it with where they live
@@supergage102 Right, thanks. That would make more sense
@@supergage102 correct, that's what I meant! thanks
My mum was a dementia nurse for 15 years in a care home - she had the idea of turning the lounge area into an old-timey "train station", with a mock-up of the inside of a train, where the windows were TV screens that showed the world going by. At first I thought it seemed pretty patronising, but once, I visited her at work and I saw the older people with dementia using it, and they were like different people, happier I guess. I think people really underestimate quite how much dementia causes you to lose your grip on reality, and how something nostalgic like that can really ground you again, if only for a moment.
That actually sounds pretty genius! Kudos to your Mom! 😃
@@megamanx466 Thanks :) There is a reason she was the senior manager by the time she retired
Your mom sounds like an angel :)
It truly is profound to actually observe just how lost many of the unfortunate people are. I work in a hospital and regularly see and interact with patients that have dementia. It can be really difficult. Imagine how you would react if a stranger showed up in your bedroom at night? Many of these patients don’t know they are in the hospital and they think I am invading their bedroom. You can imagine how difficult it can be to gain trust in such a scenario.
I watched this video of an old man with dementia, given headphones and given the music he's always loved for years to listen to, and he went from completely unresponsive, to almost like completely normal again! It was amazing! Even for just a couple minutes his daughter said it was like he was back again and I sincerely think that environments where they can ground themselves with familiar sights and sounds and experiences, in a safe environment, are absolutely ideal!
Something important about designing these is to not have any deadends. This means people could walk for hours but never get stuck anywhere and don't feel like they are stuck in such facility.
Most of the time, there is a 'main street' running in a circle in these, so nobody can get lost.
This sounds nice.
I looked back at the map to see if this was covered, and yes it looks like that's another reason why each building is pushed against a corner of the space.
Yet at the same time, they can't step out into the street.
Sounds creepy like the Truman Show.
@@robinlillian9471 Difference is intent I think. The reason it's creepy in the Truman Show is that it's all to exploit Truman, and turn his life into our entertainment. Dementia villages like these do it out of genuine care and respect for the people living there.
I love how he said “if you design for normal people, you design for people with dementia”. I am disabled and find this to be true for abled people in terms of living spaces; walkable, non-car-reliant cities benefit and improve the lives of EVERYONE, abled and disabled.
A design is only as good as the least abled person usability
That's the Curb Cut Effect -- accessibility benefits us all. Extra Credits did a great episode on it, including its effect on games.
@@cheshirealice8461 🤔Unless I'm misunderstanding your phrasing (maybe I am), I'm thinking that Penn and Teller disproved this when they took that guy in the iron lung around trying to get into various businesses. While it's certainly useful and admirable to provide access for as many people as possible, it's unreasonable to judge by the fact that some people will definitively not be able to use a particular design.
Visual designs can't be used by the (completely) blind, but can still be great designs that guide the user to precisely what they're hoping to achieve. An auditory experience with great sound design can't be used or enjoyed by the (completely) deaf, but can still be a great design that pulls you into the experience -- there are even games played entirely through sound, no visuals. Game controllers can't be used by the tetraplegic, but they can still be great controller designs for maximum comfort/ergonomics and intuitive user-centered button placement.
The fact that a group of people cannot use a design doesn't make the design useless or worthless.
It honestly depends what your consider beneficial
@@Arkylie Your is a great argument. As an architect and urban planner I always jump between what is needed, what is possible, what is easiest when concocting a solution to a problem.
What you said made me think about public transportation, where the first directive is to facilitate urban mobility for everyone... that could walk, because there are tons of stairs and gaps and big steps and mechanical checkpoints between the various elements of a public transportation chain. Now, as a service is absolutely needed without a doubt facilitating the life of billions. It is by design doing its job very well, BUT could we do it better including people with different mobility issues? could we improve it so that we even cover those exceptions WITHOUT compromising the overall efficiency? that is the challenge ongoing all over the world regarding the accessibility of public transportation (or any public service honestly). But that is not just a matter of "sensibility", it is a matter of practicality and feasibility.
What I'm trying to say is that it is almost always wrong to start designing by covering for all the exceptions because you risk condemning the project to failure by not finding the absolute perfect solution from the get go, spoiler: it does not exist. But to go back and improve, perfect, is a sign of society that is not only evolving and bettering itself, but it also rich and resourceful enough to allow for effort to be spent to just provide inclusivity.
Interesting to me how 99% of this applies to video game design. Avoid things people will misinterpret, make important things brightly/contrastingly colored, put lots of unique landmarks and divide the world into tiny, visually/aesthetically distinct zones for exploration sessions that will last 1-2 hours at a time.
oh that is so interesting, thank you for sharing
its funny too because some of the best programs often have built-in accessibility not even because whoever made it thought the end-user would need it, but because the creator needed it themselves
i think it really outlines how when society functions in the name of cost-cutting, not even the people who are saving the money are better for it
imagine how much more free we could be as people if not for our fear and greed
yeah the open world game mode has a lot to offer
as a UX/UI Designer for a gaming studio - yeah, we work on the same basic principles, such is the beautiful nature of antropocentric design. the world would benefit a lot if UX was more of a concern not only for IT but for everyday design, to make everything less confusing and more intuitive
So what youre saying is we should hire game designers to help as well?
Dementia care is expensive- but compared to a traditional care place this looked like such calm and engaging place.
They get to wear cool sunglasses tho
I feel like the number of visitors would go up. I hate care facilities and hate going to them but if I could visit my loved one in something that doesn’t smell and feel like death, I would go all the time. That’s years I would get to spend with my family again
Indeed but I do wish they had put that price tag up against what a traditional facility is charging as I am sure those amounts are probably not all that different. The fact is that 24/7 care is expensive to provide, after all you do need well trained staff working difficult shift patterns at unsociable hours. Not sure this facility model would change that all that much compared to more traditional facilities.
@@seraphina985 exactly!! On top of the hidden costs associated with the traditional nursing home environment - hospitalization for pneumonia related to aspiration or limited mobility costs $80,000 just for ONE hospitalization, but having an active lifestyle and a focus on maintaining function will prevent that.
@@seraphina985 I wonder how much of that price tag was because of it’s location. Langley might not be as expensive as Vancouver, but BC is expensive to buy land/own land.
I actually visited one of these sites a few years ago in the Netherlands. It’s really uplifting to see how much they are willing to take care of those who can’t take care of themselves.
It does also help that Dutch health care isn’t for predatory money makers. Yes, some options and treatments are still not cheap, plentiful or the best.. But the strict(er) protective public laws and country wide socialized healthcare funding aspect makes it available for people that couldn’t otherwise.
@@JurrevanHerwijnen I wish the United States had this. Americans are wonderful people and don’t deserve to go into debt for medical services.
@@wasteyourtime4961 agreed, it's unfortunate people would have to sacrifice many things for adequate health care. It's sad how many people are forgotten or exploited once they are unable to properly care for themselves or have the family/ financial means to do so :(
Uplifting in general?
@@Soka_Lakota113 Yeah, I mean it was probably the nicest country I’ve ever been to. The homeless are off the street, less city noise since so many people ride around on bikes, and had well stocked shelters for the Syrian refugees (played ping pong with some of them). I’m not saying the country has 0 problems, but it’s nice to see a shining example of human cooperation resulting in such a good outcome.
The last bit is absolutely true.
So many of the cities in the US are inhospitable to even regular people, let alone those who suffer from some mental or physical ailment. We need more tight knit walk-able hubs!
yeah i would like the feature of not getting robbed at gunpoint in a US city, thx.
@@DontTakeCrack how is this relevant..?
@@nekodjin It's not, he's just upset he ran out of paint chips to chew on.
@@TG-dr6sj :p
@@TG-dr6sj they just don't taste the same since the nanny state took the lead out. I'm so thankfull I still have my own secret stash...
my grandma was in a nursing home, but not like a hospital. it had a dining table, other residents, couches, tvs, everyone had their own room, and the nurses there were great. for the bedridden patients (like how my great grandma was) they gave them those robotic cats so they had a companion. it didd break my heart when my grandma wasn't able to distinguish her from a real cat. she would hallucinate sassy (the cat) running around the room, andat night she said that she heard sassy jumping around. sorry if i kinda jabbered on, its a habit. she was a great grandma.
it was good jabbering
@Zeke Zeke isnt your uncle's mom your grandma?
I'm sure that sassy was a lovely companion for your grandma. I'm sure it broke your heart, but just know that the familiarity of having an animal in her space likely grounded your grandma and helped her feel safe.
i'm sorry that her hallucinating the cat broke your heart, but I imagine that she really enjoyed having the cat around, even if it was only real to her.
A little jabbering on hallucinating:
There is no "spirit" in a materialistic world view. No ghost. But there is memory, and shared experience... And to your mother, to whom Sassy was as real as anything, what could possibly be said to be the difference between a hallucination and the spirit of her cat coming back to keep her safe in her last days? She summoned that cat with thoughts just how one might believe you could with magic.
In other cultures hallucinating is simply accepted as visions. They are not seen as always correct but they are still seen as normal. They don't have schizophrenia in such places like we do in the US, it's either non existent or completely different... Even with the same "Symptoms".
The difference is in whether we saw that ghostly cat as a guardian or a symptom. Maybe it can give you a little peace to know that.
My grandmother lived in this exact facility, granted it was 12 years ago but it was an amazing place for her to live. I'm glad they're getting recognition for their amazing work!
As he said at the end, people with dementia are still people - even if there is proven to be no benefits to this model over a carehome, I would much prefer to have dignity in my final days than live in a clinical trap. Love all the incredible ideas the Netherlands come up with.
I agree. Ill or not, Alzheimer's or not, a person is still a person and someone's humanity shouldn't depend strictly on work ability. I don't want to sit in a sterile white room, rotting away, with corrupt doctors/nurses (which there are many in elder care facilities), I want to still live
I'm sure even clinical facilities in the Netherlands are much better than in the US.
(ie. more humanity, more freedom, more exercise, more attention, less overmedicating, etc.)
So comparing this to a carehome in the Netherlands in deaths might not be very useful.
However, comparing it to US nursing homes would probably be very useful, but it'd probably be said that there are too many compounding variables and so the data would only really be known among "experts."
My grandma in Japan has dementia and needs 24/7 care. Seeing her in such a state makes me really sad. This is a beautiful idea and uplifting video. Thank you
Yeah my grandma has dementia and she has a helper
I hope she's okay even for a minute
Mine is the same. I'd be so happy knowing she can walk around and see nature and other people on her own, almost experience freedom again.
This illness takes so much from people, it is awful.
Dementia is fictional. Its used to lie about humans who are being abused and/or tortured and/or killed.
Same here. I have visited her at her care home, and I can tell that she is struggling with the fact that it is just so monotonous, with every day being the exact same, always being around the same people, and being confined to just a building.
I've worked in a nursing home through high school and college. While I can't say it was the worst place for dementia patients, it certainly did not work well for all of them. One patient once tried to wedge herself through the door begging to go outside with me and I even had patients confide in me that they hated being institutionalized, they missed being able to live a normal life, being part of a real community, and being able to come and go as they pleased. This concept is probably the closest thing possible to a normal life a dementia patient could ever have.
Nursing homes are fictional but so are colleges. You worked in a place [marketed] as a nursing home while attending a place [marketed] as a college?
You lie about humans being tortured and/or killed with medical fiction and/or are tortured into appearing/sounding like you possibly could be? Others youre forced to interact with as well?
Dementia awareness is HUGE in the Netherlands. There’s government supported courses on how to help someone with dementia if they’re lost for example. The Netherlands is what we in Dutch call a “care state”. The state/government has to help everyone, especially people who are more vulnerable.
Except families. They gotta figure everything out alone. People keep having fewer and fewer kids over there.
@@dylanswift5185 "over there" tells me everything i need to be honest. You clearly have no clue what you're talking about. The Dutch goverment gives you a monthly allowance for every child under 18 you have. Theres courses on all kinds of child related stuff, government subsardised if i recall correctly. I know all that and im not even Dutch, just a neighbor who visits frequently 🧍
@@Den-dd5pp And yet they still can't manage to hit replacement birth rates lol.
@@Den-dd5pp hes still not wrong tho.. just like the rest of western europe, not enough kids are being born and thats why our countries rely on immigration so much and why native europeans will be a minority in western europe in a couple of decades.
@@neamhdhlisteanach6720 in the USA, mothers have 6 weeks after birth. 6 weeks. Thats laughable. Birth rates go down when women get acess to good education, enabling them to make an informed decision about having kids. Oh, also basic rights and acsess to contraceptoon i guess. Thats the reason we have less kids. No arranged marriages at like, age 14(or 16, for most of the US :D) etc. So no, government is not at fault for the birthrates, its those pesky modern ideals that make women people not property!
Fantabulous and incredibly humanizing example of the communities that are in need of shaping still all over the modern world
A relative of mine used to get agressive, violent and angry when she would encounter a locked door in the institution she was in. She couldn't understand why there would be a locked room in what she understood to be 'her home', this would take a lot of calming down and management, only for her to discover another locked door, and kick off again. I love these village based models as they allow autonomy for residents, and have an individual exoerience. Just because someone has a brain disease doesn't mean they arent entitled to the very best care. I hope the govt spends far more on these establishments in the future
In the US they'd give her medication to sedate her and eventually tie her up to the bed reducing her physical activity and leading to more illness which would be responded to by giving her even more medication because of lack of funding and understaffing.
As a Gen Z, I often tell people I'd rather consider ethunasia over a nursing home, but this alternative really brings hope to what I'd consider as very grim and dark options our aged currently have. I hope to see these options scale up, a rare example of how economies of scale will directly make quality of life better.
Milennial here and I was thinking the exact same thing while watching this.
Economies of scale don't make quality of life better ? Sorry Amazon , me getting that pipe delivered the next day made my life worse
Yea if I had late stage cancer I'd rather be euthanized than make myself and my family suffer through all that trauma
This video shows an optimistic model of how end-of-life care can be provided, but it is incredibly expensive. As a 24-year-old, when I'm old and beginning to lose pieces of myself, I would like to throw a party of sorts with my family and then end my life in peace in the following week. I think a decisive end like that could be a huge gift to my family.
wait...you want to euthanize people with dementia?
My father has dementia and Parkinsons and we're doing everything we can to keep him home in our care. The nursing homes I've seen seems like a horrible place to live. My dad deserves a lot better than that. I'm afraid there will come a time where his condition will advance beyond what my mom, my sister and I can handle. If I could afford a place like a dementia village I'd try that before I would consider a nursing home. Watching someone who was so full of life, so kind, so intelligent lose themselves right in front of you is beyond depressing. I wish we had a cure. No one deserves to live their final days in that condition. 😔
It must be really hard for you guys. I hope the best for you. Witnessing someone fading away is far more harder than losing them.
my dad also had Parkinsons ten yrs ago, and around five yrs ago he developed dementia, esp when he's on his meds... im relieved to hear someone has the same experience as my family.... it's been very hard but now i think we're doing better
@@shehanchanuka15 Thank you. I appreciate your comment.
@@hanpogee2356 Thank you. I know there's a lot of value in knowing there are other people experiencing the same thing you are, so I really appreciate your comment. I'm also encouraged by your progress. I hope that happens for my family as well. Everyday I wake up and ask myself if I'm making the right decisions. Am I taking him to see the right doctors. Are his meds helping at all. Am I doing enough to take some of the stress away from my mother. Is she sacrificing her health to take care of him. Are we being too protective of him by not talking about the extent of his condition to his former colleagues, extended family, and those who attended his church. Did your family worry about things like that too?
I’m sorry to hear about your father. We just had to make the decision to move my mother into a care facility for Alzheimer’s in the last six months. I don’t know where in the world you are, but I hope you find somewhere you’re comfortable having your father be. My thoughts are with you and your family.
Turning the scary fever dream that is dementia into a good dream of how things are or how they used to be. Seems like a good idea to me.
My grandmother had dementia and when her caretaker who was my grandfather (her husband) passed unexpectedly we had to scramble to get her into a memory care facility in the US. The first place she was in temporarily was so sad, I could see her spirit drain but after about a year we were able to get her into a "village" and the quality of life difference is nothing short of ASTOUNDING! She could function in a way that was familiar and comfortable to her and not be in a foreign hospital setting. The abrupt change from a home where they are familiar, to a clinical setting must be very disorienting and upsetting to these people.
That side of my family had mental health issues and memory loss starts early, so I know it will happen to me to some extent and I only hope I can have people take care of me as well as in this Hogeweyk.
How was it cost wise though? When my "functionally what I call grandma" got too unwell for us to care for her, her family could barely afford normal nursing homes, a village like this sounds like it'd cost multiple times as much.
I'm glad you brought up the clinical nature of most nursing homes, my Grandma thought she was in a hospital because she was sick, not exactly wrong, but saddening.
I am absolutely terrified of dementia so I'm glad there are people and places dedicated to taking care of those suffering from this disease, and helping minimise the impact of it.
*for people of wealth. Please include that as the average person would never be able to afford to live like a complete and respected human being.
If they stopped spraying, injecting, and feeding us with toxic chemicals and heavy metals this wouldnt be a problem.
@@JustTheTruth-Please do you think that government should finance it so even poor people with dementia can have access to those types of treatment?
@@JustTheTruth-Please absolutely not true. We The People can vote to make it a Constitutional Right. and since the huge majority of people are likely to go bananas before dying, there's a very strong chance that an amendment level consensus can be achieved.
@@JustTheTruth-Please Especially not in America for sure, but this is in the Netherlands. I don't know, but maybe they have this space for all people.
I'm no psychologist or doctor but I'd reckon that a nursing home fails because it ultimately strips people of their humanity.
My Nana went to a nursing home when she was elderly and unable to be cared for. Many of the people there were scared, confused, and begged to go home. No wonder they deteriorate quickly, they're being locked away in a depressing hospital.
Care villages are a home for the elderly to live and feel like people. This needs to be implemented no matter the cost, all over.
Also implemented for mentally ill and disabled pre-retirement people too!
It's true that a nursing home pretty much always is a bad environment - sometimes even operated under truly terrific circumstances. But the things you describe (scared, confused and begging to go home) unfortunately are also part of dementia no matter how great the environment is. It would happen at home too, even the begging to go "home". We also have no way to truly medically treat it and stop the deterioration that is part of the illness. There are only some drugs that can often slow it down a bit but it is not permanent and for some people it doesn't work at all.
Of course that doesn't mean that the environment can't have an exacerbating or protective effect and there should absolutely be more thought and resources put into how we care for our elderly. Just wanted to put what you saw in the nursing home a bit more into perspective of the unfortunate realities of the severe illness that is dementia.
I deffinitelly agree. My grandmother was mentally healthy when she had an accident and broke a vertebra (part of her spine). She deteriorated very quickly in the hospital, lost her connection to reality and deveoped severe symptoms of dementia in a week. She became physically healthy soon, but she could not get back home because she needed 24hour care which our family could not provide. She stayed in the hospital and died half a year later.
Our grandfather lived in an assisted living community, and he was great until COVID lockdown. When we had a zoom meet with him he barely looked alive - the isolation and loss of freedom was horrible on him. We pulled him out and he sprung right back up for another 4 months at home, was even able to travel a bit. It was a lot of work (24h care split between a family of 5, someone was always with him) but a very unique experience and something I cherish.
There's a reason that people use "getting sent to the nursery home" as an insult
"Also implemented for mentally ill and disabled pre-retirement people too!" - That'd be me, and I'd like to note that "pre-retirement" is an age thing more than an ability thing when you're permanently disabled. Retirement in the US is expected at or around 65, especially if someone is planning to end up on social security benefits, because that's roughly when a normal person qualifies it. Someone like me who gets disability before 65 is essentially retired, but living about 20% below poverty level if all they are getting is disability. I've been on disability for about a decade and I'm 44.
Living in something like a facility featured in this video would be amazing. I'm lucky to have a housing voucher, but I've also moved more times than is sane with that voucher because of horrible landlords. I've also spent a couple short stints in hospital psych wards and they're so bad you want to pretend you're okay just to get back out; I've also spent about 45 days in a nursing home learning to walk again due to a severe leg injury, and that experience was a nightmare. If it wasn't for a tablet I was able to purchase with an employee laptop, being able to call a friend from my room via landline, and a nurse-assisted trip home in the middle of my stay to grab a portable PsOne, games, and art stuff, I think I would have left that building with a whole new set of neuroses, and I don't need any more problems with my brainspace.
Shoutout to the audio engineer in this. Too often Skype or Zoom interviews record the audio from the call itself, leading to awful room acoustics, low quality microphone, and digital artefacts, etc. Here it sounds like the interviewee is in the same room-whether a lavalier is used is unclear to me, but at the very least the audio is recorded locally and edited to match the visuals. You guys did it right, an example to be followed.
My grandmother had Alzheimer's and at the late stage of the desease, she was locked in a specialized institution on a miniature space of one room and one corridor. There was a restaurant and a garden which we could visited with her but she was not allowed to go there herself. It was terrifying for me to see how desperately a human life could end. This dementia villages look much better, allowing people to live a relatively normal life and make their own choices. Even the freedom to decide to choose between beign inside and being outside can make a huge difference for the quality of life. My number one hope is a discovery of cure for dementia but if it doesnot occure, these villages can serve a crutial role of keeping our future dignity.
My grandpa had dementia for the last 5 years of his life. It was really sad to see his rapid decline. I’m glad that this initiative is taking place. We need social connections 🙏
No not really. Some people live like hermits. They may be socially awkward but dementia is about the health and age of the brain. Social connections don't hurt and they may help.
@@eddenoy321 and they can do so there. It was literally described as choice, they can be indoors in their private space.
@@alespic Kewl !
my grandpa just started showing symptoms a few months ago and already he has forgotten my name/thinks I am my mom. It’s so sad, especially because he’s only 75 years old and one of the smartest people i’ve ever met (hes a renowned doctor who has saved thousands of peoples lives with breakthrough research on heart attacks, and public health/education!.) It’s absolutely heartbreaking and I am so so sorry you also have had to deal with this.. I hope there will be a cure soon
@@crypticshadows I truly know your pain. Know that they lived their life to the fullest! Now it’s our turn🙏take care
I'm just imagining this for people with Down Syndrome or who need some level of full time care their entire lives, and how amazing this could be for them. I love this so much.
That just seems like a great place to live in general
I wouldn't do this for down syndrome, because while they might have a lower IQ they still have a full conscience. They might not be as smart as neurotypical individuals are, but they are still fully there. Better care would be great though, I just don't think a full village is necessary, but I could see it being a cool thing.
i love across a village like that!
These exist aswell in Germany. The concept is pretty nice for alot of disabilities
@@dominicskicki6926 because human lives arent always about profit.
That village looks great to live into even people without dementia
That’s part of the point, good design works well for every human, independent of the individual’s limitations. And today’s cities are not built for humans.
Netherlands is a great exception, with plenty of livable cities. As said in the video, that neighborhood reflects many typical Dutch village design.
That’s what I was thinking - why don’t they put people without dementia in places like this too?
@@andrewjgrimm go.. outside
@@luxursunsets ?
@@luxursunsets way to miss a point
I wish these kinds of places were more common. My grandma lived in a typical nursing home. For the first ten or more years she was just in assisted living and that was better. Eventually though she had to be moved to the dementia unit which was a locked basement. She was much sharper at first than anyone else down there but I think once she was downstairs she went downhill a lot faster. She called it “the facility”.
Despite the best of 'intentions', unfortunately the reality is that the great majority of *_all_* care facilities prioritize _'compliance'_ uber alles.
@@klowen7778 “Uber alles”? What’s that?
@@nkbujvytcygvujno6006
Over everything/above everything
Said in German to invoke the feeling of extremity
@@commisaryarreck3974 Oh, okay, thanks.
The facility is a good name for something so depressing
Wish my grandparent's got this level of care and attention. I remember walking into the dementia care home and it was almost like silent hill. People surrounded by unfriendly faces ordering them around through this hospital like maze, people freaking out constantly and vacant people just wandering hoping you are someone they know. Bringing them back into this natural (although safe) environment would have been fantastic for them, and for the visitors.
Strangely reminds me of the sense of community and freedom of living on a university campus. I think everyone needs that access to the spectrum of social interaction. What a great design and I'm so glad people are putting more care into elderly care
My friend from the Netherlands tells me how much comfort it brings her knowing her parents will have quality elder care at no cost to her or her parents. I wish this design were feasible in the US. I could not see the government reimbursing this design under our current system, many of these amenities would either be cut or charged to the patient in our for-profit system.
@@user-be1jx7ty7n in the US, when you can’t afford your elder care health costs the person has to “spend down” (liquidate any remaining assets/resources/wealth) to qualify for Medicaid assistance under the Medicare program. The health care and nursing home industries take people for all their worth and leave the family with nothing left. And since medical care costs are unregulated by the government this is very common here.
@@user-be1jx7ty7n That is nonsense. The insurers and providers are private, but the universal healthcare system is regulated by that government. So just like Medicare, everyone can have access to affordable health care, independent of their health or background. The prices are set, and the government dictates what needs to be covered. And low income individuals can have their premium reimbursed during tax returns.
Many European countries have similar systems. In contrast others use a completely state owned health system. Both can work great.
Keep in mind that the Dutch government still funds the system. The premiums people pay are not enough to fund the whole system. For higher income persons you also need to pay an additional tax for the healthcare. Forgot the name of it, should be 2% or 3%.
This is fantastic. The Dutch are light years away when it comes to urban and spatial design,
Imagine how far the US would be if they actually cared for their citizens.
@@SilkySkillsUnited The US isn't a tiny, hyper-dense rich country.
@@john_smith_john The US is the richest country to ever exist on planet earth lol. Also, are basic amenities not scalable? Because Germany is also pretty good at this with a population of over 80 million.
I hate it when Americans act like they are living in a third world country. They don’t realize how good they have it.
Thanks for the compliment, but don't give us too much credit. We're slowly but surely slipping towards a more Anerican mindset when it comes to concrete and cutting down trees in cities and charging for necessary things and so on.
As someone who worked as a healthcare assistant in a care home specialising in Alzheimer's patients, I can see how much these changes would improve quality of life.
My biggest concern with the home I worked in was always the mental health of our residents, and while a rebuild into a village like this wasn't possible, we tried to take as much inspiration as possible from them.
I'm glad more is being done to normalise this type of care, and I hope there's either a cure or a drastic improvement in current treatments developed soon. These people deserve so much more.
I absolutely love this, such a beautiful way to help ease the struggle of dementia patients.
That being said, my fear of forgetting is not lessened at all and once I start forgetting loved ones I’m clocking out permanently.
I really like the idea of "Dementia Villages" or more plainly put, long term care communities. In Canada we have some facilities like this but most elderly people get put into old fashion nursing homes that aren't designed to treat specialized illnesses like dementia and alzheimers. One thing I wish they had addressed in the video is the cost difference between the two models of care and the accessibility of the village model. Elderly care is already expensive in North America and is barely subsidized by the government. While I see the advantages to a village style model it will be almost exclusively a rich person only luxury here for the forseable future.
We have places like this in Florida, not to the extent of the dementia villages in some ways, but you certainly are right: they are incredibly expensive
It was honestly really difficult to walk into the care home for my grandpa when he had dementia. Everyone there were not allowed to leave that section of the hospital unless they are being looked after. And most times I would visit him and he would talk about "planning his escape." He wanted his car, and his own house even though he was losing his memory. It didn't feel like he had any freedom and I can only imagine what my grandpa could have done in one of these. I wish he could have felt more in control of his own surroundings.
The problem is that if your grandpa did escape and leave and something happened to him, the home would be liable. As it is, many nursing homes are facing a staff shortage BECAUSE they are severely underpaid in comparison to the work they put in (I've tried to care for my dad with my mom 24/7, it was soul-crushing as you can't do anything else) and there's a very high burnout and turnover rate among carers. Most ex-carers I know say they'd rather work in ANY field that isn't care work ever again, they'd take retail over a care job in a blink.
Now, nursing homes or aid homes are expensive as is in spite of carers being paid peanuts (because you need a lot of those to care for patients), imagine how much more expensive it would be if they were paid a proper wage. Even if someone made the investment of the village, the issue is still that these people are going to need an army of carers to live.
@@irondragonmaiden I completely agree with your point and I don’t think these two issues are the same. I was sharing a personal story about my family and no where did I mention that the healthcare workers were “bad.” My comment is about a FUTURE issue with taking care of dementia patients in a more HUMANE manner. The issue you brought up is a CURRENT issue. Where no one (especially healthcare workers) get fair wages. So I kinda see these as two topics to talk about. Obviously they’re somewhat related but one is about treating our sick family with care and other is treating our workers with care. Both matter. And sadly is wasn’t the hospital that wouldn’t let my grandpa leave, it was a small corridor inside the hospital where elders with dementia would sit, for the whole day and do nothing. I’m not claiming the health workers are to blame but rather the corporations that don’t care about anything unless it affects them directly.
My grandma is starting to show stronger signs of dementia, this is such a positive view and it actually gives a useful insight on what can be better for them. Unfortunately we do not have such facilities where we live, we can start accommodating her in a more humane and better design way ourselves.
Best of luck my guy ❤️
I'm really happy that this exists. There is a man in my neighbourhood with dementia and he often goes outside his house to take a walk around the street. He usually sticks to the same route which is probably a good sign that he remembers how to do some things, but sometimes he gets into people's gardens and gets lost. Everyone on my street knows him and helps him but some people aren't so lucky... I hope more places like this can be built so no one is alone with this anymore
listen to "everywhere at the end of time" and you'll know how it FEELS like having dementia! it's interesting!
I lost my Grandmother here in the home on Christmas day. I'm 36 taking care of her and going through that was the hardest thing I've ever done in my life and I have been through a lot. My prayers go out to all going through the same.
this makes me so hopeful and excited to see, i am eager to find out how the research/long-term observation supports this style of care! when my grandmother was in her last few years of dementia, she was considered a "high flight risk" because of how often she wanted to get outside and walk. our brief conversations with her over time revealed, that she was just trying to walk to the store up the street like normal for a coffee, as she had done every day for 20 years prior. if she had had a safe environment to freely navigate her area and make autonomous decisions, she likely would have had a much easier last few years with fewer conflicts. i hope these facilities can continue to provide that to other folks with dementia in the future!
they definitely have kopje koffie in that dutch dementia village. ^^
Yes, now my father is in a secure village he can only do small walks in the yard or long walks when his wife escorts him, so he has become unfit and overweight.
Working in both primary school and nursing homes during my life, I still say they are very similar in how they treat individuals (in this case children and the elderly) as homogeneous, mostly due to low staff ratios. It is a sad state of affairs for those not able to contribute to capitalism and therefore deemed unworthy by our society.
facts
Yeah, read Foucalt, we know, we just allow it
Wow!! Good point NEP!! Thanks for posting! It is insidious!! 🤔🤣🤣😱
@@galeparker1067 you doing alright gale?
@@ousarlxsfjsbvbg8588 I think so...... Why?.......Too many little face thingies.......? Or comment content? 👍👃✌️🥰🥰🇨🇦
My great grandmother had dementia, and when put into a nursing home for it, her condition immediately declined. The hospital environment was so foreign and standardized that she almost instantly began forgetting things, and, not long after, her family and friends. It was really saddening to see, and I hope advancements like these will help ease memory loss for people who struggle with it.
She probably forgot things because she felt sure that she herself had been forgotten about.
Dementia patients aside, why can't all of us live in villages like this ??!
because corporations make money off your misery and maintain control of the population by keeping them miserable
move to the Netherlands
@@ofjeworstlust69 ok let me pack up and pay around 10 thousand dollars which i do not have for moving my things, my family and myself
@@NoircatMask sounds like a plan
How to live there
1- fly to netherlands
2- get dementia
2- get dementia
2- get dementia
2- get dementia
2- get dementia
The founder of this village is the type that gets to heaven without judgment. God bless you sir for such a forward thinking mindset that helps the elderly. If more people take your idea and apply it else where, this world would be a better place
This is just average dutch city design
I work in a nursing home and I hope that someday the United States will implement this level of care and thoughtfulness for people with dementia.
I am afraid that in USA, ordinary people would not be able to afford such a care.
@@samuela-aegisdottir So, we have to fund it as a society.
That may be far off, considering people without dementia don't even get close to that ammount of care
If you work in a nursing home then you should be familiar with what Medicare does and doesn't cover. Obviously the US won't implement this level of care.
Police won't stop killing POC and the military spends 900 billion dollars a year. You think America cares about old people?
outdoor gardens can improve quality of life for everyone, not just people with dementia. 6:00
Yeah. Sometimes you get a weird feeling with videos like this. It's nice to see people being cared for but bitter sweet considering all the young people who work full time and can't afford to even dream of this kind of lifestyle.
This is great. It treats people with the dignity they deserve. Even in my mid-30s without dementia, I'd love to live in a place like this, with everything you need so conveniently located in a peaceful environment!
This is beautiful, one of my biggest fears about growing older is loosing memories and being in that confused helpless state. Knowing that people are working towards a better version of care for those who can’t help them self but also still give them that freedom of choice is so important.
This idea is so well-intentioned, so humanitarian, and has proven to be so effective... that it's pretty much guaranteed we'll *never* see anything even remotely like this in the US.
You won't see it anywhere...because it's too expensive and provides no proven benefit.
@@Agtsmirnoff Where are you from?
Only place where I heard about this kind of places is netherlands and one Asian country
Otherwise eldercare getting more and more a super market mentality where everything needs to be done fast
There are dementia care facilities that have a lot of natural light, courtyard spaces but they're also extremely expensive. And I wouldn't say it's anywhere near the scale of this where it's an actual little town.
Good design does not have to be expensive.
This is so promising for families having to run support for dementia.
Not really, its costs a huge amount
@@salokin3087 for now, hopefully.
I’m not expecting this anytime in the US unfortunately.
But with unions on the rise and people slowly banding together to take their lives back, one could hope
Beautiful! My sister just passed, she had dementia. I know she would have loved this place.
To me, of the saddest things about dementia has always been that their loved ones think they’ve lost them far before they actually have. Even if someone is disoriented or has severe memory issues, they’re still a person first and a patient second. If I were diagnosed, I wouldn’t just be afraid of forgetting my life, but also of my loved ones forgetting me before I’ve forgotten them. It’s so comforting to see such a tender and human approach to treatment
This is so great. I can imagine being confused all the time, and just having people who care about you and your quality of life must be a HUGE thing for these people. Society can't just be comfort for those at their peak and extreme anxiety for everyone else.
My Granny suffered from dementia and was a very active person before her diagnosis. As her care moved to needing more help, the facility didn't always know the best way to cope (for instance, she would constantly walk the halls, something she used to do around town daily). They were always afraid she would walk off and get lost. These villages are something I wish we had access to for her, but don't exist anywhere near us. They would have kept up her standard of living far longer.
This is a really weird take away, I'll admit. But the Dutch are building better nursing homes as neighborhoods than what the US has been and allows to be neighborhoods as actually neighborhoods.
We have a lot to learn from these people!
trying to go anywhere from a us/canada neighborhood without a car is really depressing, and boring
America has nothing to learn because it doesn't want to learn. It's more profitable to remain as is. Human suffering is profitable.
For the love, thought, and respect that went into this creation, I’m very thankful!!
This reminds me of when I did nursing. We looked at more "open" models of care, in which clients could do activities like gardening, cooking (and being allowed to use knives) and it sounded so much nicer than the dank and sad place I volunteered in - where each client got a room and that was it
Dementia is the single scariest thing I can imagine.
Just from watching this video I can imagine that additionally to the benefits for the residents, surely the people working in these palces have a nicer time working than those in traditional institutions for similar purposes, another important advantage.
good point
I’ve worked with people with dementia for a couple years, and this idea is totally inspiring!
this makes me want to cry. i wish my grandma had access to a place like this towards the end of her life. incredible.
this is truly beautiful, and this is the definition of being considerate how your loved ones feel. ❤
Everything that the man who runs the village said made a lot of sense. It's great that we are looking for ways to improve the quality of their lives.
5:28 Thats the same amount my family has to pay to keep my grandma in a care facility without this design. Thats a absolutly resonable price for such a village, I have a hard time understanding how funding for those villages is concieved so high while a nursing home costs the same
You getting ripped off then.
People so often forget how much the feeling of autonomy plays into our subjective quality of life, places like this serve as a reminder of that and hopefully also as model for the future of nursing homes.
It's great to see people take care of the people who took care of them
My nan just passed away yesterday after living with Dementia for some years... she would have really enjoyed the village style facility
I'm sorry for your loss. I believe somewhere in her she still remembered all of you, and even if she couldn't fully show it, that was still there.
@@Flarflenugen thanks for your comment, I agree that surely there must be some memory of the family locked deep away inside, there just wasn't any way to reach those memories
I love this concept so much. Dementia is literally one of the most evil things that can happen to a person, and people with dementia deserve the most humane life humanly possible. This seems like a great way to provide just that.
This kind of village should be made more for just old people in general. My grandma has trouble to go grocery shopping because she isn't as mobile and thus streets and sidewalks are a struggle for her. Something enclosed with everything you need inside is all she'd need
While this seems like a great idea, the big caveat is the cost of these homes. Specialized dementia care is really expensive, since as you see in the video, people have very particular needs. So unfortunately, until those homes aren't funded through public health care (which they usually aren't) they dont represent a viable option for the vast majority of people and families.
If we can go to the moon, we can do this.
Except going to the moon is a great selling point for those who vote, but dementia treatment is not something that gets u vote. If US doesn’t even have universal health care for even base things, what chances will be there for people support such “extravagant spending”? They much rather spend on more guns. Shrug,
So true because in the USA we only seem to care about cutting taxes on the rich no matter the cost to society.
Soooo fund it through health care then, America
this is entirely possible, especially with our increasingly elderly population it may even become necessary.
As someone whose mum is starting to get extremely bad dementia at an extremely young age (65) this vide brought me to tears. I wish we had stuff like this in Australia. Most of our nursing homes here are full of people that don't really care. I imagine the dementia sections are worse. Most of the carers working in nursing homes are just using that as their job whilst they pursue their Bachelor of Nursing.
"dozens of dementia villages have opened across the globe" - I doubt we'll get anything like that here in the US. Usually if there's any great new concept involving public planning, infrastructure, or public health, we're typically behind Western Europe and East Asia on that front.
USA version of it would be suburb style with giant street for cars and a big wall around to keep the patients in.
USA has the worst city design and planning I've seen in my life.
I’m sure there is some version of this available for the rich and wealthy
This looks amazing, I’ve had family in typical dementia care and it is horrendous, both for the patient and family.
This is so nice. If patients can move to a "dementia village" in the early stages of dementia maybe they will remember why they are there and won't be scared every single day
So how about spouses? My Grandma lost 7 years of her life just sitting in a nursing home with her husband of 50 years. She would have LOVED to have been able to live in the same place as him & visit those shops etc & also have the ability to go on outings to regular shops etc (as she did in the later years of her life after he had died & her health had deteriorated to the point that she couldn't drive anymore) as well as have some of her own belongings there & do craft work etc while sitting with him, without having to bring huge bags of stuff with her & being incredibly limited in what was possible. Eventually btw someone convinced her she needed to take her life back & she went on a speciality bus trip for the elderly for 2 weeks & her husband was dead within weeks of that. Even though he had really not communicated with her for years, he had clearly understood she was there & when she vanished from his side for 2 weeks, he must have thought she had died & so he gave up living too to join her I guess. Imagine if the villages could give spouses quality of life, without having to leave their spouse too! (I don't know if they do or not, but it wasn't mentioned)
This is amazing!!
It’s easy to forget how important fresh air and sunshine are for mental well being, mental impairment or not
What a beautiful thought process
My grandfather passed away from Alzheimer's last year,
It's a horrible thing to see your loved ones wither away and the worse part not being able to help,
Hopefully these efforts succeed and ensure a better life for the ones who need it the most.
Such a beautiful video. Really appreciate the extra effort vox puts in these design videos. Definitely, my second favorite after 'Borders' series.
Probs a huge thing to help the ppl w dementia feel safer and happier is making a more familiar space. He mentioned that more recent memories fade first - so they won’t know why they live in an institution or how they got there, or even that they live in an institution at all. But they’ll still remember, at least to some extent, the way things work in the “normal” world. It was really genius to design the layout of the space around common layouts in Dutch cities. If their memories from young adulthood or teenagedom are more intact, then mimicking what they would’ve known then probably helps them feel at home, and safe, rather than like they’ve woken up on an alien spaceship with no idea how they got there.
I worked in one of these as a volunteer when I was 15!! It made me so happy to work there and give people safety and freedom.
This is brilliant! Humanity and kindness above everything else! We need this everywhere in the world!
Treating humans like humans makes them not as irritated, wow
It's sad that funding for this is so low. Not the same parallel, but I spent time in a psychiatric hospital and I wouldn't be surprised that someone with dementia in a similar "hospital" environment would feel scared or confused by their surroundings - it's an alienating place to be in. Hope this model continues, and proves very beneficial to those who need it most.
I cant imagine how expensive this must be. But still its a good solution for people with money
well it said 70-80k for every resident
@ghost mall afaik it's available for everyone. No one pays things like this directly, well, there is a maximum of about 300€ that you have pay yourself, and after that all the costs are for the insurance. From what I understood there isn't a huge difference in how much it costs compared to regular dementia care.
i worked in an assisted living facility and the residents were treated horribly. i wish they could’ve been in a place like this.
This is a beautiful way to care for elders. ❤️❤️❤️
Northern Europe continues to stay ahead of the rest of the world
I think this is so beautiful. Older people deserve so much better than the experience they have in traditional nursing homes. There final years shouldn’t have them treated like prisoners, they deserve to live life to the fullest.
God I wish they had this where I live in the uk, my great aunt is currently begging to get out of hospital, to go home, instead she’s going to get out of hospital and go straight to a nursing home.
To be fair if you had 140-270k laying around to go to one of this villages, you could’ve probably flown him to one of these places as well
I'd love to see these continue
Wow! I am in awe... This was absolutely amazing! Bless these founders and good luck to the great men and women living and working in such villages.
Wow! Again, WOW!
As someone who is currently trying to help a relative with dementia, I thought this was an interesting idea. I looked to see if there were any villages closer to where we live. Unfortunately, there are none, but there is one in New Jersey. Looking at the website for the one in New Jersey, it looks like they have abandoned many of the concepts talked about in this video. It looks like a single large building with individual rooms just like any other assisted living facility. This makes me wonder if they have run into issues since the original facility opened, and just don't want to talk about things that have gone badly.
This is the kind of design we should be applying to ALL institutions. Psych wards, assisted living, prisons to an extent
All 4 of my grandparents had Dimensia or Altzimers. Which I believe means, I'm guaranteed to get it.
So I'm glad this level care is being made for these conditions.
Broken brain has to be the worst disability a human being can endure.
Unless you plan on moving to a Scandinavian country you're not getting anything from the US. Republicans love to say prolife but actively seek your extermination.
This looks absolutely amazing! Don't think that's something every family can provide their older loved one with, but it definitely makes the life better for a person that lives there
This video is so informative and eye-opening! It's amazing to see the concept of dementia villages in action and how they provide a sense of community and purpose for those living with dementia. It's clear that the approach taken in these villages truly puts the well-being and happiness of the residents first. Thank you for sharing this inspiring and hopeful look at dementia care.
This is awesome. There should be made more places like this in the future.