Reliving childhood

Commerce Aveune: my hometown's main street.
Longview. WA, in the 1920s

You're in your late 70s, let's say.  You live in a fairly nice apartment on the 23rd floor of a tower, somewhere in Seattle.  Family members visit you every couple of weeks, which you enjoy.  But you're tired of television -- which, along with its usual problems, you find confusing and difficult to hear.  You'd love to go out for a walk.

And sometimes you do.  But everything "out there" is confusing.  You sometimes get lost.  You don't understand the products that many of the businesses actually sell.  The cars on the street all look the same, and kind of ugly.  People aren't hostile to you, but they walk by without looking at you, let alone stopping to pass the time of day.  Going downtown is obviously impossible -- you wouldn't know which bus to take, and are afraid to try.  But even in your own neighborhood shopping area, everything seems huge and intimidating.

But what if you could get into a shuttle every week or so and, a few minutes later, arrive in a small town that looks a lot like the town you grew up in.  A town square.  A small library building.  An old time pet store.  A diner where you could order a burger and ice cream soda, while listening to familiar hits from the 1950s on a juke box.  A barber shop -- not a hair stylist.  A small movie theater showing Humphrey Bogart films, where all the patrons are in your age group.  Buick Roadmasters and DeSotos parked along the street.

And no, this would not be a theme park.  It would be -- although you wouldn't have to think about it -- a treatment center for mild to moderate age-related dementia.  "Villagers" staffing the various stores would include non-uniformed nurses.

According to the Atlantic, such an enclosed "small town," with 24 buildings constructed around a village green, is being created in San Diego.  The town is designed to look as a town of similar size would have appeared during the years 1953-61.  The project will implement an approach to dementia known as "reminiscence therapy."  It will appeal to those memories of persons with dementia that are the last to fade -- memories from their childhoods up to their twenties.  These are the memories that are most likely to prompt patients to join in lively conversations with each other.

The Atlantic article doesn't discuss the validity of the therapy in any depth, but says that studies have shown that reminiscence therapy improves both cognitive function and quality of life.  A psychiatry professor at UC San Diego is volunteering as a medical adviser to the project.
   
The concept sounds a little creepy, perhaps. A vignette out of the Twilight Zone. But, hey -- although I don't think I'm demented (although, of course, I'll be the last to know) -- I wouldn't mind spending a day or so, occasionally, wandering -- physically, not just mentally -- all about the golden world of my childhood.