World Alzheimer Report 2025: Reimagining life with dementia – the power of rehabilitation (Alzheimer's Disease International, 18 September 2025)

Summary

This report explores the important topic of dementia rehabilitation, combining expert essays and real-world case studies from multiple countries globally to examine 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. 

Content

The report is divided into five parts.

• The introduction defines dementia rehabilitation, explaining why it is vital for people living with dementia, and issues around accessibility.
• Section 1 looks into the core components of rehabilitation, namely person-centred, goal-oriented, and collaborative approaches.
• Section 2 delves into strategies and methods to support the attainment of rehabilitation goals, providing practical techniques to implement a rehabilitation goal.
• Section 3 tackles the implementation of rehabilitation across various environmental settings and stages of dementia.
• Section 4 discusses system readiness for rehabilitation, taking a critical look at what can and should be done for rehabilitation to become a more mainstream part of post-diagnostic care for dementia in various contexts

The report also makes the following recommendations:

• Rehabilitation should be embedded within national dementia plans (NDPs) – and implemented. Encouragingly, 65% of current national dementia plans mention rehabilitation, but with 75% of World Health Organization (WHO) member states yet to develop national plans, Alzheimer’s Disease International (ADI) calls on all governments and stakeholders to recognise, embed, and implement rehabilitation into their strategic responses to dementia, in alignment with Action area 4 of the WHO’s Global action plan on the public health response to dementia, namely ‘diagnosis, treatment, care and support’.
• Rehabilitation should be a right. Dementia is recognised as a disability under the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD), and rehabilitation is generally recognised as supportive care for disabilities. ADI calls on governments to fully embed rehabilitation for dementia in their policies and to start to report on progress at the annual Conference of State Parties (CoSP).
• Rehabilitation should be embraced as part of ‘precision care’. Recent scientific innovations, such as blood-based biomarkers, have enabled the dementia community to focus more on precision medicine and personalised care. The new dialogue is around ‘precision diagnosis’, ‘precision treatment’, and ‘precision risk reduction’. Now we need to ensure that rehabilitation is more consistently included as part of ‘precision care’ – personalised and focused on the needs of the individual.
• Good rehabilitation is on a continuum. While this report aims to paint a picture of the golden standard of rehabilitation care, there is a whole continuum of good practices that can be tailored to varying resource contexts. While specialised healthcare professionals can – and should – play an important role in supporting people living with dementia with their rehabilitation goals, this report provides many resources that people living with dementia, their doctors, families, friends, and other informal carers can use at little to no cost. This can be implemented when the general health and care workforce, as well as the public, are equipped with dementia rehabilitation literacy.
• We need more implementation research and evaluation. Rehabilitation is an emerging field of practice and, as such, there is a paucity of longitudinal data. What is needed is implementation research that evaluates the benefits of integrating rehabilitation for people with dementia into health systems in different contexts. We need to explore real-world practice – how rehabilitation can fit into a case management model of care that integrates the needs of the whole person, as opposed to a ‘one-off’, task-based model.
• We need to measure economic impact. Improving functionality through rehabilitation should extend independence, enabling people with dementia to remain in work, live at home, stay active in the community, and delay hospital and residential care admissions for as long as possible. Economic impact measurement and cost saving, including for carers is needed alongside further research to substantiate the argument for investment in rehabilitation as a cost-effective measure.
• Quality of life and ageing well don’t have to be a luxury. We need to normalise rehabilitation and encourage governments to invest in healthcare systems that integrate rehabilitation as part of the regular care pathway. Healthcare professionals need to be trained and encouraged to discuss and undertake rehabilitation with dementia patients. Interventions need to be timely to make the greatest impact – we cannot wait until it’s too late.
• Carers should be actively involved in the rehabilitation process. The benefits of rehabilitation are not just felt by the person living with dementia but also their carers, improving their own wellbeing and caregiving experience. Carers should be educated about the importance of rehabilitation, its principles, and the role they can play, and supported throughout the process as essential actors in the dementia journey.