The Therapeutic Design of Environments for People With Dementia

The article by Day, Carreon, and Stump (2000) in the current issue provides an excellent, comprehensive review of findings related to environments for individuals with cognitive impairment. It is timely in that the environment was an area identified by experts as critical to specialized dementia care and was one focus of the ten National Institute on Aging (NIA) collaborative studies of Dementia Special Care Units (DSCUs). In addition to reflecting on the major conclusions in the article by Day and colleagues (2000), this commentary elaborates on the conceptualization and measurement of physical and social environments in long-term care settings, drawing heavily on the experiences and recent findings of the NIA DSCU studies.