First assisted living facility dedicated to Alzheimer’s patients and research to open in 2014

By Kevin Woo, Special to Alzheimer’s Speaks | November 30, 2012

In 2014 the first assisted living facility dedicated to those with Alzheimer’s Disease will open in Nashville, TN.  The facility, Abe’s Garden, will expand from a 120-bed independent and assisted living facility to a “new” Abe’s Garden that will have 48 additional beds for residents who have been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s or some other form of dementia.

The expansion will include a new 5,700-square foot research facility that will allow academics, doctors, behavioral scientists, interior designers for the elderly, and gerontologists to conduct on-going research on the Abe’s Garden campus. The dedicated research center will also be the first of its kind in the U.S.  When the research center opens in 2014 the three medical academic partners will be Vanderbilt University Medical Center, Meharry Medical College and Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.

Michael Shmerling, the son of Abraham Shmerling for whom Abe’s Garden was named, hopes that the assisted living and academic research facilities will become a model for other such centers around the world.

“In the past, patients who are diagnosed with Alzheimer’s have essentially been warehoused,” says Shmerling. “The assisted living facilities don’t have the physical infrastructure or the training to handle those who have various forms of dementia. We are going to change that model with the expansion of Abe’s Garden.”

According to The Journal of the Alzheimer’s Association, Alzheimer’s disease is the sixth leading cause of death in the U.S. yet there are no residential facilities dedicated to serving its patients. One-in-seven people with Alzheimer’s disease live alone. More than five million people currently have Alzheimer’s disease and someone is diagnosed with the disease every 68 seconds. There are 15 million unpaid caregivers in the U.S. who provide 17 billion hours of assistance each year.

In 2012 it will cost $200 billion to care for the five million people diagnosed with the disease. By 2050 it’s estimated that more than 15 million in the U.S. will have Alzheimer’s disease and the cost for their care will exceed $1.1 trillion.

The gardens

The “garden” at Abe’s Garden will be sub-divided into a series of smaller gardens designed to stimulate difference senses – visual, auditory, and olfactory. Researchers have determined that by stimulating different parts of the brain Alzheimer’s patients have a better quality of life because they participate in something that is familiar and repetitive.

There will be flower gardens to stimulate the sense of smell and sight, and gardens equipped with benches, picnic tables, and things for kids to climb that will encourage family visits and, subsequently, more interaction with the medical staff.

The residents will have their choice of outdoor activities based personal preferences. There will be places to sit and watch others as well as spaces that encourage people take part in physical activity such as gardening or even sitting on swings.

The interior designers of Abe’s Garden will use colors and aromas throughout the facility to serve as memory queues and brain stimulants. For example, various colors will be used to help patients recognize different areas of the building and help them find their way through the facility. Aromas will be used to help manage patients’ emotions. The smell of coffee or chocolate, for example, will be used to trigger the memory of eating and energy, while the smell of almond milk will be used to create a sense of calmness. And, surprisingly, smell of broken crayons will be used as it has been scientifically proven to lower blood pressure.

Hopefully Abe’s Garden will be the beginning of a larger movement, one that will make assisted living facilities more friendly and efficient for those with Alzheimer’s.

What are your experiences and what would it take to encourage more facilities to follow the Abe’s Garden model?

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