Disegnare sistemi e spazi di cura per Alzheimer

Aim and methods. The Authors, a demographer and a designer, endowed with their non medical competences, link and interweave the consequences of the spread of Alzheimer's disease in Italy with the emerging questions and pitfalls in its management and in designing effective care systems and spaces. Results. Owing to the general process of population ageing, and in particular to a bulge in the oldest cohorts, the growth rate of prevalence of AD - whatever the estimate of the present amount - will be more than expected, and it compels to plan and design adequate systems of care. Also a new attention to the old question of the intertwining between environment and disease suggests a greater effort to design and implement residential care facilities, enhancing their therapeutic strength. However, a crucial pitfall results from the divergence and the actual incompatibility among the forms of environmental design required by three partly overlapping but distinct populations: non self-sufficient elderly, early-stage and midstage AD. Conclusions. The Authors focus their attention on two possible ways of planning and designing integrated spaces of care for the three population: a unified and inclusive one, vs. a partition according to the severity of the illness. In both the ways, nevertheless, the design of care systems and care environment raises crucial doubts concerning the quality of life of the inpatients and the effectiveness of care