The 2025 World Alzheimer Report explores the important topic of dementia rehabilitation, examining how the concept is defined and implemented, as well as practical considerations of how to best adapt rehabilitation practices for people living with dementia in different contexts.
The report, co-authored by ADI, the University of Exeter and the University of Sydney, focuses on the essential, yet often overlooked, area of dementia rehabilitation. The World Alzheimer Report 2025 presents a global and practical roadmap for ‘reimagining life with dementia’ through rehabilitation, shedding light on what rehabilitation means in dementia care and why it matters, as well as how tailored and goal-oriented approaches can help people maintain function, independence, and participation across settings and stages.
The report combines expert essays and real-world case studies from multiple countries globally, and shows how person-centred, collaborative rehabilitation plans may be put into practice at home, in the community, and in long-term care.
Key themes of the report include the evidence that personalised rehabilitation improves targeted everyday functioning for individuals living with dementia and can delay loss of independence; the current global gap in access, with emphasis on lower-resource settings; and a call to embed rehabilitation into national plans, workforce trainings, and benefits packages as a matter of rights and practical economics.
Chapters included in the report:
- The core components of rehabilitation
- Strategies and methods to support rehabilitation goals
- Implementing rehabilitation across stages and settings
- System readiness
Key findings:
- Rehabilitation is a person-centred, collaborative approach to care that enables people with dementia to maintain or rebuild skills, from preparing meals and shopping to mobility, speech, and self-care. By focusing on what matters most to each person, it allows people to remain independent for longer, strengthens family connections, and eases pressure on health and social care systems.
- 65% of existing national dementia plans mention rehabilitation, yet 75% of WHO Member States still have no national dementia plan.
- People with dementia rarely have access to rehabilitation, despite evidence that they can benefit from it.
- SMART (specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound) goals are part of an effective rehabilitation approach for people living with dementia.
- Studies have shown that people who had engaged in tailored individual cognitive rehabilitation had lower levels of disability than people who had received only standard care, and remained in their own homes for six months longer than average before moving into residential care.
- At least one in three people globally will need rehabilitation for a health condition at some point in their lives; in lower- and middle-income countries, more than half of those who need rehabilitation do not receive it.
- The WHO’s Rehabilitation 2030 initiative has supported work to strengthen rehabilitation in ~80 countries since 2017, with a goal of 100 by 2030.
- Seizures are up to seven times more common in people with dementia compared with peers of the same age, while falls that cause injury are two to three times more common for people living with dementia, potentially leading to reduced mobility and quality of life. Modifications to the lived environment can reduce certain risks and empower people living with dementia to be more confident in continuing to carry out activities of daily living.
- Informal care accounts for roughly half of global dementia costs, underscoring the value of approaches that maintain independence.
