Community Comes First in Taiwan’s Dementia Village

TaiwanPlus News

Nestled in the mountains, a rural district in northern Taiwan is taking a unique approach to caring for its community members living with dementia.    In Pingxi, one in every three residents is over 65. Currently, around 80 of those residents are living with dementia – an incurable neurological condition that causes gradual cognitive decline. Although Pingxi is mostly known for its sky lanterns, it’s also one of the only so-called “dementia villages” in the world.   Learn more about Pingxi and the community effort behind the creation of its dementia village on the TaiwanPlus News YouTube channel.   Reporter: Cadence Quaranta/Pichi Chuang  Videographer: Klein Wang  Video Editor: Alison Nguyen  #TaiwanPlusNews #Taiwan #Pingxi #dementiavillage

Transcript

00:00Wang Chenyingzhi lives in Pingxi, a rural district nestled in the mountains of northern Taiwan.

00:22In 2024, she was diagnosed with dementia.

00:25It can make her forgetful, and she's afraid of the symptoms getting worse.

00:30Still, she's able to go on with her life, spending most of her days at the district's dementia center,

00:36and in the afternoons, venturing to a nearby pavilion to chat with friends.

00:41More than 35 percent of Pingxi's residents are over 65, or one in every three people,

00:48making it the oldest district by percentage of elderly residents in all of Taiwan.

00:54But Pingxi residents living with dementia, like Wang Chenyingzhi, can live comfortably here because of a unique network of care

01:02that involves not just its dementia center, but virtually every part of society.

01:08Together, the community has turned Pingxi into a dementia village, one of just a few in the world,

01:14and the only one that has formed organically around where people with dementia already live,

01:20rather than being purpose-built.

01:23Around 2017, the local health center started testing everyone in the community that was over 65 for dementia,

01:31around the same time that Taiwan's national government began pushing for dementia care.

01:35The center also began working with a larger hospital, around an hour away,

01:41to make the process of getting a formal diagnosis easier and driving people to their appointments.

01:47Later, they focused on education, informing everyone in the community about dementia and its effects,

01:54so that they could help care for their neighbors and friends.

01:57From the other house, it was considered the right to make an independent marriage.

02:16The state of the gym is hosted by a more than 1-4-8-6-7-8-8-8-1-8-9-6-8-2-8-8-7-8-8-8-7-7-8-8-8-6-8-8-8-8-8-8-8-8-8-8-8-8-8-8-8-9-8-8-8-8-8-8.

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