Designing Appropriately for Optimum Environments to Care for Dementia/Alzheimer’s Residents

Abstract

According to the World Health Organization, dementia is now the fifth largest killer in the world, although dementia is the number one killer in some wealthier countries. Globally, 50 million people suffer from this disease, but due to an aging population, this number is expected to increase to 130 by 2050 million. The 2020 dementia study on Chinese people over 60 years old shows that there are approximately 15.07 million people with dementia among Chinese people aged 60 and over. Among the elderly over 85 years old, 1/3 suffer from dementia. The study found that 9 kinds of changeable risk factors, including living environment, education level, marital status, smoking, high blood pressure, hyperlipidemia, diabetes, heart disease, cerebrovascular disease. If these risk factors can be controlled, the incidence of dementia will be greatly reduced, along with the overall prevalence of dementia and its associated mild cognitive impairment. Improving the management of patients with dementia, optimizing the dementia care system, and increasing public awareness of dementia and mild cognitive impairment are issues that need to be resolved urgently. Therefore, my research question is how to design the indoor public areas of nursing homes for patients with dementia in China.

Date of Award	2021
Original language	English
Awarding Institution	University of Dundee
Supervisor	Mary Modeen (Supervisor)