'Dementia
village' inspires new care
By Ben Tinker, CNN
July 19, 2013 -- Updated 1425 GMT (2225 HKT)
Corrie Visser suffers from severe dementia and is now living in a cutting-edge facility in Holland.
STORY HIGHLIGHTS
- Dutch dementia facility shows new way of providing long term care
- It lets residents roam while staff work in village shops to keep an eye on them
- Living quarters are furnished to reflect a person's younger days
- Health experts from across Europe and Japan are looking at the Dutch model
Corrie Visser suffers from severe dementia and
is now living in a cutting-edge facility in Holland.
Editor's
note: Watch
"World's Untold
Stories: Dementia village" on CNN International on Sunday at
11.30 p.m.
Weesp,
Netherlands (CNN) --
Theo Visser was thirsty. He got up from his seat during the half-time break in
a soccer match to purchase a drink from the concession stand.
"There
she was, standing behind the bar," he recounts, 58 years later. "It
was love at first sight." Theo asked the young woman out to a movie -- and
the rest, they say, is history.
It's
quite a shame, then, that Corrie Visser doesn't remember any of this. Or if she
does, she can't say so. Corrie is one of 152 residents at Hogewey, a cutting-edge
elder care facility on the outskirts of Weesp, the Netherlands, just minutes
from downtown Amsterdam.
'Dementia
Village' - as it has become known -- is a place where residents can live a
seemingly normal life, but in reality are being watched all the time.
Caretakers staff the restaurant, grocery store, hair salon and theater --
although the residents don't always realize they are carers -- and are also
watching in the residents' living quarters.
Residents
are allowed to roam freely around the courtyard-like grounds with its
landscaped trees, fountains and benches -- but they can't leave the premises.
Music is an important therapy
Their
two-story dormitory-style homes form a perimeter wall for the village, meaning
there is no way a resident can accidentally wander out.
And if
they do approach the one exit door, a staffer will politely suggest the door is
locked and propose another route.
Placing
an aging family member here is far less expensive than round-the-clock, in-home
care. It also takes an enormous amount of stress off family members who don't
have ample time or proper training to care for their loved ones.
Corrie
has received a diagnosis of severe dementia, meaning she requires attention and
support 24 hours a day. That clinical indication is necessary to gain
admittance into Hogewey.
The
burden of caring for Corrie eventually became unmanageable for Theo and his
daughters, so together, they made the decision to place her here.
He says:
"It's perfect. I wouldn't know a better place for her. It's 100%
good."
Nearly
every day of the week, Theo drives 15 kilometers (10 miles) each way to spend a
few hours with his 80-year-old wife.
"I
do it for myself," he says. "I need it for myself. She (still)
recognizes everyone... so it's important I be here every day."
Although
they can't chat with each other, Theo and Corrie will often sit for hours,
holding hands and lovingly look into each other's eyes. Every so often, Corrie
offers a smile, a laugh, a squeeze of the hand. At least part of her memory, it
seems, is still intact, though she can't verbalize much these days.
Like
other residents of Hogewey, Corrie may not know exactly where she is, but she
always feels right at home. That's precisely the idea.
For
Yvonne van Amerongen, one of Hogewey's founders, the need to create the small
village was deeply personal.
"It
was the moment my mother called me and told me my father had passed away
suddenly," she recalls. "Nothing was wrong with him. He just had a
heart attack and he died. One of the first things I thought was, 'Thank God he
never had to be in a nursing home.' That's crazy that I have to think that! I'm
in the management of a nursing home and I don't want my father to come
here."
Van
Amerongen sat down with her colleagues in November 1992 to discuss how they
could transform the typical nursing home into more worthwhile living.
They
created a 1.5 hectare (four-acre) complex, completed in 2009, that is home to
23 housing units and seven different "lifestyle themes," such as
crafts, culture, religious and urban.
Art
lovers get paintings on the walls and music is always playing while the
religious get more conservative décor and Christian crosses on the walls.
The
simple goal: provide the most normal possible life, reminiscent of each
individual's formative years.
From the
furnishing of her unit to the decorations and the type of food served, Corrie
is led to believe that nothing in her life has changed. It's this sense of
normalcy that they strive for day in and day out at Hogewey.
In some
ways, this is similar to the manufactured reality depicted in the movie
"The Truman Show," where a man played by Jim Carrey discovers his
entire life is actually a TV program. Everything he thinks is real is in fact a
mirage, created by television producers for the viewing public's entertainment.
Van
Amerongen dismisses any accusations that she and her staff are duping their
residents. "We have a real society here," she says. "I don't
think people feel fooled. They feel fooled if we just tell them a story that's
not true and they know it. We're not telling stories."
But
telling stories is exactly what some of the residents do, all day long,
including Corrie's housemate, Jo Verhoef. Like all of Hogewey's residents, Jo's
dementia is rapidly progressing. Her "loop" is getting shorter; the
conversations she carries and the questions she asks are becoming more repetitive
in a shorter amount of time.
"Do
you know Steve Matthew?" she asks, multiple times over the course of an
hour. Of course, no one does, but each time she seems surprised that we haven't
met. *
Steve may
be a relic of Jo's past, a distant, foggy memory of a baseball player she says
lived with her for a short time when she was younger. Or, he may be a figment
of her imagination. Sadly, we'll never know.
Worldwide,
35.6 million people have dementia, according to the World Health Organization,
with 7.7 million new cases being diagnosed every year. At that rate, the number
of people with dementia is expected to double by 2030 and triple by 2050. This
will be an additional burden for governments already struggling to contain the
runaway costs of health care.
In
Holland, everyone pays into the state health care system during their working
years, with the money then disbursed to pay for later-in-life expenses - and
that means living in Hogewey does not cost any more than a traditional nursing
home.
Could
this innovative model work in other countries? Health care industry leaders in
Germany, England, Switzerland and Japan are all beginning to take notice. At
Hogewey, says van Amerongen, "We have Dutch design, Dutch cultures, Dutch
lifestyles, but the concept is to value the person, the individual... to
support them to live their life as usual, and you can do that anywhere."
On a
physical level, residents at Hogewey require fewer medications; they eat
better, and yes, they live longer. On a mental level, they also seem to have
more joy. It's a difficult thing to measure, but that is the most important
thing here at Hogewey.
So could
this work in other parts of the world? That's the next question.
* After reading this story the real Steve Matthew (not Matthews)
contacted CNN to confirm he does indeed exist and this part of Jo's memory is
accurate. He says he still visits her every three weeks and that she became his
'artificial mother' while he was in Holland playing baseball.
We have also corrected the spelling of his name in this story.
http://edition.cnn.com/2013/07/11/world/europe/wus-holland-dementia-village
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