Dementia Village - A real 'fake' village in the Netherlands to watch the sick

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BRUTALITOPS

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Hogewey, located in the Netherlands, is the only care facility of its kind in the world and is home to over 150 people with severe dementia. Started by 2 nurses who feared having to put their own parents in a traditional nursing home, ‘Dementia Village’ is a place where residents live a seemingly normal life, but are actually being watched by caregivers at all times. There are almost twice as many caregivers as residents in the village and they staff everything from the grocery store to the hair salon.


There is only one way out of the alternate reality of Dementia Village – a door that is locked and under 24 hr surveillance – an important safety measure for wandering residents. If a resident of Hogewey approaches the door a caretaker will suggest that this door is locked and perhaps they could look for a different door.
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Residents are free to roam around, visiting shops, getting their hair done or being active in one of the 25 clubs available at Hogewey. As well as the psychological benefits this provides, staying active also improves general physical health. The residents here take fewer medications, eat better and live longer. And although joy is a hard thing to measure, the staff at Hogewey think their residents are more content on a day to day to basis.
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http://alz-caregiver.com/hogewey-dementia-village-the-future-of-dementia-care/

what a wonderful place.
 
I don't know if I would want to die with the world playing a trick on me. But then again I guess if I had dementia I wouldn't know anyway.
 
This is a product of modern industrial civilization and the breaking of old traditional extended family ties and living patterns. In villages where such traditional family patterns exist in which a community is composed of groups of extended families living within close proximity of each other such an idea as this would not only be considered extremely odd, it would be considered immoral. In an extended family community it would be considered immoral as hell. Why wouldn't you take care of your own? That is what a family does, from birth, disability, to old age and dementia family would take care of family. That would be much easier to do in such traditional communities as there would be a ready pool of caretakers who have a stake in taking care of old granny as one day it would be there turn and they have the assurance of these extended family connections that they would be taken care of.

This type of treatment facility for dementia could only happen in a modern industrialized urban culture centered on the nuclear family where these extended family ties are diminished or simply don't exist and, therefore, neither does the pool of caretakers available to help out with a doddering old grandpa. I see this as a dark side of modern, industrialized and urban life style and it does make the aging process in our culture quite frightening. I fear senile dementia more than I do death because of the confusion, isolation, loneliness and utter irrelevance it represents.

I applaud the managers of these assisted living facilities for their imagination and humanity as this is far superior to the sterile clinical environments dementia patients are condemned to that makes the prospect of senile dementia so horrible. Still and all I have this nagging feeling that it's still a poor replacement for the extended family environment where one still stays connected to their community and the generations in a familiar environment and this part of aging is seen more as a part of the cycle of life and family.
 
I fear senile dementia more than I do death because of the confusion, isolation, loneliness and utter irrelevance it represents.
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I pretty much already consider it death. I mean if you are not self aware and not sentient about your existence, how is that not the death of ones self? Yeah you are breathing, but if you can't form new conscious experiences, you are already a shade. Walking dead.
 
Ghost of Watermark said:
I pretty much already consider it death. I mean if you are not self aware and not sentient about your existence, how is that not the death of ones self? Yeah you are breathing, but if you can't form new conscious experiences, you are already a shade. Walking dead.
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Not completely....look at Big Asshole....that demented motherfucker is hardly a shade.
 
Teflon Don said:
But you won't know and for all you know it is a blissful experience
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I saw it happen in my Great Grandmother and Grandmother. It was not a pleasant experience for them. However what I fear the most is that there is a small kernel of you that gets to see and understand it all but cannot affect your "reality"... You get to watch as you get violent to members of your families that you love, you forget who they are, you crap your pants shirtless in -30 degree weather standing in your front lawn... You forget how to "wipe"...

I fear dementia.
 
Mott the Hoople said:
In reality is should be Darla who you fear. She's out to get your ass homey!
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No, it's Desh.

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