My (uneducated) guess is that it depends on the person and where you're moving. My husband has vascular dementia that has gotten steadily worse. We lived for over 30 years in the same house and just moved about a month ago to independent living inside a CCRC that is in the area we had originally moved from. Lots of family nearby and a great place as far as all the CCRC has to offer. We almost moved two years ago, but I backed off because I was afraid of it confusing him more.

Already he is forgetting the house where we lived for over three decades. If I talk to him about it a bit, he claims to remember, but then he says that was a lot of years ago. But, like I said, it's only been a month. We've had to make trips back to the old house (which hasn't sold yet) to get carloads of stuff we didn't have packed for the movers, and even when we're there, he has questioned where we are.

As far as where we're at now, he does get confused. It's about half the size of our former home and all on one floor instead of two, but he still has trouble finding the bathroom and the bedroom, but he had gotten to the point of having trouble finding the bathroom at the old place, too. Most of the time I simply tell him to look for the room with a toilet or the room with a bed. It just seems to me that exercising his brain even that much can't hurt (again, an uneducated guess).

I worried at first about him being outside, but he can't walk far anymore, plus he hasn't tried anyway. He simply sits out front on the patio and talks to people who come by walking their dogs. It's a very friendly place, and he was always very social, so I think that's been good for him. This is a big place (I've seen small towns that aren't as large) with very little traffic inside it, and we're far enough inside it that he wouldn't be able to walk to the busier highways that border it.

Basically, I think the decision whether to move is probably different for everyone and depends a lot on how much help you need now and expect to need in the future. I wish you the best.