dementia care: From the train compartment to the night cafe

More and more nursing homes are a growing group of Alzheimer’s patients. Also scientific findings in the structural and therapeutic measures, nursing home operators, are reflected in the increasingly.

Currently 1.2 million people in Germany suffer from Alzheimer’s disease. A strong upward trend. Who will look after them, should stimulate their “cognitive reserves”. People with dementia find their rooms more easily, if it is not by Numbers or name is highlighted, but with photos that show you as a 40-Year-old. Because in the long-term memory, this Knowledge is most likely still available. The Affected a piece of autonomy preserved. Also, late-night cafes, where night active seniors are welcome to improve the quality of life.

Circle-shaped residential groups

There are examples like this that Jörg Schulz is participating in the care debate. The 50-year-old physician, since 2009, Director of the Neurological Uniklink in Aachen, Germany, is a scientific Advisory Board of the Alzheimer’s research Initiative. Thus, an approximately circular-shaped residential groups urge the movement and the lack of a sense of demented patients saturated star wing-shaped connected to the Housing.

All physical and mental movement are preventive, Schulz, and delay the progression of the disease. “It has been proven that social contacts and the active exchange with other people stimulate the brain,” confirms Siegfried Wolff, managing Director of the Institute for quality marking of social services (IQD), for his certifications are equally the focus on the quality of life of the residents.

Focus on quality of life of the residents

Who can be lonely in front of the TV of a shallow program music on in the background, has an increased risk of Dementia. Because of this, the nursing home operator knowledge, treading more and more of them in the therapy of new territory, and to also structurally. There is a big barn in the winter as in the senior citizens ‘ residential Park Cottbus garden for ten rabbits.

Or in the big hard Hauer Seniorenhäus’l in the lobby to the entrance area of an enclosure for eight white tufts built monkey, with a running gear also have access to an outdoor area. And while the residents in the house watching the antics of monkeys through a large pane of glass, you can touch the animals in the outdoor area and pet.

Positioning system provides the freedom to

To its inhabitants the greatest possible freedom of movement, has set the residential community for the elderly, a nursing home for 130 residents in Filderstadt, early on a positioning system. A dementia exceeds its programmed radius of action, is triggered via SMS to a locating function to find the Affected quickly. Similar systems operate lock, the elevators or doors, as soon as you would like to use a disoriented residents.

The Ludwigsburg Karl height in a room as a train compartment. In the original First-class-Sit pulls on the virtual window, a landscape can be digitally recorded. Patients with advanced dementia can remember at this distant travel experiences.

Psychology plays a big role

In Bietigheim-Bissingen, we are experimenting with robotic plush animals that show self-emotions, and in the case of the inhabitants of feelings trigger. In the Leonberger Samaritan pen you hold in the outdoor area, two sheep behind a waist-high picket fence. The idea is that The residents don’t feel locked in, but the fence as a containment for the Artiodactyls.

In Ostfildern, in turn, you have to try out assisted living forms, in which Volunteers and professionals to share the work around the clock. The families are speaking with a up to 20 hours in a month, which reduces the cost, and involve the residents in the house economic daily life.

Often on the border to make fun of

Individuality is also the old centre of St. Elisabeth: A resident who always wanted to iron, which is not for fire protection reasons, a prepared iron that is just warm to the touch got. A cold she had rejected, which proves how sensitive the environment Affected do not need to bypass in order for you to feel offended.

Eight – to tenth-graders visit in Winnenden regularly seniors in the “house in the rogue wood” to paint with them and to lead them, if necessary, the brush. The idea: it expresses those Who can’t articulate verbally his feelings otherwise. In the senior citizens ‘ centre “Am Rosengarten” in Bondorf, it also relies on art therapy.

Clown instead of psychotropic drugs

In the residential community for seniors in Filderstadt dementia clown triggers among the residents regularly feelings and reactions. This is more humane than psychiatric drugs, from the build of Stress in the residents and prevents their aggression. “Afterwards, the atmosphere is always peaceful and relaxed,” says home Manager Rosemarie Amos Ziegler.

Other houses put in about therapy dogs, which always bring back the inhabitants after years, even to Speak.

(Clown Birdie with a demented Senior living community for seniors in Filderstadt )