The experience of ‘home’ in dementia care

Abstract

You awaken in the early hours of the morning with a feeling of disorientation and strangeness. Shifting in your covers, you realise that the room that surrounds you is not your bedroom at home, but rather a communal dormitory with other sleeping bodies in beds mere feet from you. You are confused and frightened; moving to step a foot out of bed, an ear-piercing alarm suddenly shrieks through your head. The bodies around you stir awake, and turn towards you with irritation, telling you to ‘stop it’, to ‘shut it off’. Another body opens the door of the room and bundles you back into bed. The alarm stops. After a while, confused, afraid, and inexplicably drowsy, you fall asleep again. Wandering the hallways of this building later that day, you struggle to remember how you got here. Who are these other people? No-one will answer your questions. You touch your ...