A salutogenic approach to dementia design

Kirsty Bennett, manager of the Designing for People with Dementia service, talks to Aged Care Insite about DTA’s dementia design resource and how the new Aged Care Quality Standards can facilitate better design

Latin is not a dead language when it comes to dementia design.

The phrase salutogenesis is a word that guides the philosophy of Dementia Training Australia (DTA) and is derived from the Latin for health – ‘salus’, and for source – ‘genesis’.

It was coined by sociologist Aaron Antonovsky, who believed health is relative on a continuum and the key research question is what causes health (salutogenesis) not what are the reasons for disease (pathogenesis).

DTA has taken this idea and applied it to living with dementia. They hold that “a salutogenic approach is about finding opportunities for people with dementia to live as full a life as possible”.

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• dementia-friendly environments
• environmental design
• external article
• salutogenesis