A new generation of treatment facilities is aiming to integrate dementia patients with the communities around them, blurring lines between home and hospital.
By Joann Plockova
Reporting from Weesp, the Netherlands
July 3, 2023 in the NYT
On a recent morning in this quiet village outside Amsterdam, an older woman stocked shelves inside the local supermarket. In the plaza just outside the store, a group of men sat around a table, chatting the hours away. Over in the town square, a woman in a hijab sipped coffee outside the cafe.
If it looked like a typical Dutch town — with a restaurant (which is open to the public), a theater, a pub and a cluster of quaint two-story brick townhomes on a gridded street map — well, that’s the point. Many of the people here don’t realize that they are living in the world’s first so-called “dementia village,” and it can be difficult for visitors to tell the difference between the residents and the plainclothes staff.
Gert Bosscher, whose wife Anneke, received an Alzheimer’s disease diagnosis six years ago and has been a resident for nine months, said the decision to have her at Hogeweyk was an easy one. “My first impression after entering Hogeweyk was an open area, decorated with flowers, with a relaxed atmosphere in which clients and relatives were walking around freely or sitting on a terrace drinking a cup of tea,” he said. “To be honest, at that moment I had made my choice already.”
Since 2009, the Hogeweyk, which sits on four acres in the Amsterdam suburb of Weesp, has aimed to “emancipate people living with dementia and include them in society,” according to its website. The community, which is funded by the Dutch government and currently serves 188 residents in 27 houses, marked an evolution from traditional nursing homes — the authors of the 2020 World Alzheimer Report called it a “paradigm shifter” — by offering residents (and their families) humanized care that feels more like home.
The US is always behind in everything medical.