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Tuesday, April 10, 2012

This is what I want when I get old

A Dutch village dubbed "The Truman Show" for dementia patients is getting praise from Alzheimer's experts in the U.S.
The tree-lined streets of Hogewey, a tiny village at the edge of Amsterdam, boast shops, restaurants, a movie theater and a hairdresser. Its 23 apartments are carefully crafted to feel like home to 152 residents.
But Hogewey is not a real village; it's a nursing home.
"Our director compared it to a theater," said Isabel van Zuthem, Hogewey's information officer. "The frontstage is what all the residents experience as a normal way of living, their normal home. But backstage, we are a nursing home. Everything is arranged to give all residents all the care they need. But they feel like they're living a normal life, and that's what we think is very important."

To read the rest of this story, click below:
http://abcnews.go.com/Health/AlzheimersCommunity/alzheimers-disease-dutch-village-dubbed-truman-show-dementia/story?id=16103780

2 comments:

schnitzelbank said...

I wanted to share this video with you, it's about an old man responding to music in the nursing home. It's wonderful.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NKDXuCE7LeQ

Anonymous said...

This idea plays into my paranoid fear that I'm already living a carefully staged fantasy life and actors are only pretending to be my family, my neighbors and my clients.
It's probably caused by watching too many reruns of "The Prisoner" when I was a little kid...