By Meghan McGowan
Read Time: 4 mins.
Alzheimer’s disease is commonly seen as solely a memory problem. In reality, it’s far more complex, and caring for patients with Alzheimer’s and dementia is just as complicated. Memory care facilities face an uphill battle against common behaviors like wandering and agitation.
Understanding the causes of these behaviors can offer valuable insights, informing the way facilities keep their patients comfortable, calm, and safe.
Dynarex’s Glenshaw furniture collection helps facilities create thoughtful, resident-centered memory care design.
More Than Memory: How Alzheimer’s Works
Alzheimer’s disease isn’t yet fully understood. Experts believe that malfunctioning proteins in the brain interrupt the functioning of nerves and neurons, which lose connections and eventually die. This deterioration fundamentally alters the way the brain operates.
Minimizing Fear
Dementia changes the way brains process sensory input. An Alzheimer’s patient can see the same images as always, but their mind interprets those images differently. This can cause them to fear everyday items. Dark area rugs might look like holes in the floor, shadowy corners can become frightening, and shiny surfaces could affect their depth perception.
Understanding these misperceptions allows care teams to adjust accordingly, like covering reflective surfaces, removing rugs and floor mats, or keeping gentle, even lighting on in patient areas to help keep patients calmer and happier.
Adapting to Patient Behaviors
Deteriorating short-term memory often causes patients to stop recognizing their surroundings, leading them to wander in search of the familiar. This presents the risk of becoming lost, falling, or entering areas like storage rooms or busy streets where they might get hurt.
Sensor pads and other alarms are indispensable for alerting caregivers to patients that have gotten out of their chair or left the area. For dementia patients, seeing a door can often trigger the urge to go somewhere, even if they don’t know where. Camouflaging staff doors to blend into walls or look like furniture can also help minimize wandering and discourage residents from entering restricted areas.
Incorporating personal items like blankets and family photos can make a patient’s personal space more familiar. More residential furniture styles can also help by making patient rooms feel more like home.
Soothing Agitation
Agitation is common in Alzheimer’s. Patients may become upset or angry, often without an obvious reason, sometimes becoming inconsolable or even aggressive.
While agitation may seem to come from nowhere, it often stems from frustration over the loss of independence and ability as well as changes in the brain that affect impulse control and emotional regulation. It can also be triggered by pain, hunger, confusion, overstimulation, and unpleasant sensory input. Even loud noises or bright lights can be enough to send a patient into an episode.
With this in mind, some facilities include “sensory rooms,” which provide controlled sensory stimulation with elements like water features, quiet music, soft lighting, touchable items such as sand or clay, and gentle scents. These soothing environments can help to redirect and calm agitated patients. They can also help prevent agitation, with studies showing that they can boost mood and improve cognition.
Time-Traveling for Patient Comfort
Short-term memory loss often leaves Alzheimer’s patients literally living in the past. Sometimes called “time-shifting”, this experience causes patients to believe they’re at an earlier point in their life. Challenging this delusion or reminding patients of the truth rarely helps. These revelations can be upsetting, confusing, and are usually quickly forgotten. Instead, many professionals advise aligning with patients’ beliefs.
In Europe, designers have taken this concept literally with facilities called “dementia villages.” Pioneered in the Netherlands, they look and function like self-contained towns, often from the general era of the residents’ youth, with “houses” for patients and features like restaurants, salons, and grocery stores. The U.S. is one of many countries experimenting with the concept, with a similar village set to open in Wisconsin in 2027.
While this level of detail is challenging to operate at scale, mainstream memory care facilities can still take inspiration from dementia villages. Incorporating decorations reminiscent of residents’ youth and models of radios and TVs from an earlier time can help time-shifted patients feel more at ease.
Putting Patients First
The best memory care practices don’t just seek to control their patients’ challenging behaviors; they try to address the root causes. By creating spaces that feel familiar, safe, and welcoming, facilities can help patients feel more at home, even when the world around them no longer makes sense.
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