There's a town in the Netherlands that's essentially a nursing home pretending to be a village, where every resident is either a dementia patient or a caregiver, so that people with dementia can have a high standard of living while still being protected and cared for:
Today, the isolated village of Hogewey lies on the outskirts of Amsterdam in the small town of Wheesp. Dubbed “Dementia Village” by CNN, Hogewey is a cutting-edge elderly-care facility—roughly the size of 10 football fields—where residents are given the chance to live seemingly normal lives. With only 152 inhabitants, it’s run like a more benevolent version of The Truman Show, if The Truman Show were about dementia and Alzheimer’s patients. Like most small villages, it has its own town square, theater, garden, and post office. Unlike typical villages, however, this one has cameras monitoring residents every hour of every day, caretakers posing in street clothes, and only one door in and out of town, all part of a security system designed to keep the community safe. Friends and family are encouraged to visit. Some come every day. Last year, CNN reported that residents at Hogewey require fewer medications, eat better, live longer, and appear more joyful than those in standard elderly-care facilities.
In traditional nursing homes, with their clinical appearance, the situation is openly communicated to residents—you’re sick, you can’t take care of yourself, you’re forgetting things again. But in Hogewey, the residents live in a place that looks and feels like home, even though it’s not; what others know to be a façade, they see as reality, which may help them to feel normal even in the midst of their disease. Psychologist Donald Spence defines the concept of “narrative reality” as the ways in which stories and places help link the “true” world to one that a person is better able to understand, using storytelling as a vehicle to understand the truth—you’re in a place that’s holistically normal, you’re not lost, etc.
The Dutch Village Where Everyone Has Dementia - Josh Planos, The Atlantic
