Are all assisted living facilities depressing or is it just my perspective?

SZHNJ, in my area there is a large difference between Assisted Living, and that of a Nursing Home.

My Dad was in Assisted Living and it resembled more of being a hotel with a beautiful lobby, and the dining area was more like a restaurant with a menu and white table cloths. Same when Dad moved over to the Memory Care section of the same complex.

Now, my Mom was in a Nursing Home, and even though the building was brand new, it was depressing. A whole different concept. But then again, my Mom needed more physical care then my Dad.

That’s how I feel, Cali. I could easily live in one of our assisted living facilities. They are welcoming.

I was gonna day what Needhelp said. The assisted living facilities here are beautiful, on the outside they look more like hotels and nice apartment buildings. They have beautiful common areas & dining rooms (like a restaurant setting). The front lawns are well manicured. It’s the nursing homes that are downright depressing. The halls are dark, the rooms are all white, there is the tell tale smell of old urine. They LOOK like a nursing care facility and a not a home. They are long single story building, sometimes in an L shape, with a low ceiling. They don’t have front yards or beautiful grounds like an AL.

The assisted living facilities in my area are nice. It’s the nursing homes that are depressing. People are very active in the assisted living facilities here. There are tons of activities to participate in.

There is one place I visited that was only memory care and I wasn’t crazy about it.

You know what’s interesting to do. Just to snoop, look at help wanted in that field.

The place that I picked up the funny vibe from was hiring in all fields. They had reviews posted from current and past employees, none were positive. This place was one of the most expensive so don’t always go by price.

All of the others had good reviews. Hardly any nursing homes have good reviews here.

One place I found that was interesting was a ‘group home’ that was owned and run by nurses. They had good reviews. Smaller places that are ‘home like’ because they are individually owned homes. Some said their loved one did better in the smaller ‘less institutional’ type atmosphere. I don’t find the assisted living facilities to be like an institution, more like an apartment or hotel.

My moms facility was not fancy. She first went into AL. They have IL, AL, MC, SNF.. when I first went to look at the facility and I went to to the AL floor, I got off the elevator and it looked almost like my sons college dorm.
I spoke to Residents, one man had lived in in IL for almost 15 years and downsized to AL when his wife passed away. The facility had started out as a retirement home only decades ago.

She was in AL for almost a year and she went to SNF in May of 2016.
She actually thrived in SNF, she got involved in all the activities made friends, went to church services. The hair salon was on her floor and she still got her perms, and the hairdresser even got my mom to fold towels, mom loved doing that. She was never in her room.

At the Remembrance Service in July, my mom passed in June at age 92 , two other women who passed also, lived there for 15 years. Another woman who passed at age 107 moved in there years ago when it was a Retirement Home. I worked in two SNF facilities and they were not depressing.

My mother lives in an ALF which is beautiful and not depressing at all. The games and crafts are not designed to be intellectual, for obvious reasons, but to be doable by elders who have lost some cognizance. Mom's ALF has lots of parties and entertainment and a very large garden for strolling. She's in the Memory Care annex now, but it's still nice and not depressing, but many residents are pretty far down the dementia road.
Keep looking until you find a NICE community for your dad. They DO exist

I agree. They’re all depressing as hell. My mom was still a little “With It” when she went into assisted living. She was appalled at first but the staff did a good job of placing some ladies at her dinner table that were similar in abilities to mom. Mom was kinda the queen bee. She still hated it but it was the first time she had socialised regularly with people other than my dad, with dementia, in years.

In eldercare there’s not much good stuff happening any longer. The menu we have to chose from runs from Not very good, to really awful. I had to do lots of not very good stuff for my folks.

Being of completely sound mind makes it very difficult to be in assisted living situation.My brother is there. He is 85 and he has a benign brain tumor that sits on his medulla and makes his balance quite poor. He has a probably early Lewy's Dementia diagnosed more by symptoms than anything else and he has some problems with memory,though often is more sharp than I am in that regard. He is easily made anxious, can no longer drive and lives in a hot place with poor transit. He has no support system there and I am at the other end of our state. So assisted living was the choice he and I thought best together.
Now however he is thinking of moving home, which is only a few long blocks from where he is, of using something like Visiting Angels for shopping and so on and giving this at least a try for whatever amount of time he might be able to do it. There will never again be the ability to drive and he knows that.
The games, yes, are for those who honestly are more impaired than your dad will be, and he will find it difficult to find those he can communicate with in a meaningful way more than likely. There are only a few where my brother is and he at times feel like he is more a caregiver than a resident.
You are correct. There is no ideal. The people in Assisted Living facilities are for the most part not happy. Indeed, why would they be? If you think about it a whole lot? Why. A few have their small dogs; I think it is better perhaps for them.
Wishing you good luck. There is no good answer really to any of this; only the best answer you can come up with given the circumstances.

"These places" are often depressing enough, but there's also the problem that we tend to be in pretty low spirits when we look at them. Nobody is full of the "oh be joyfuls" when we already partly feel that we're trying to find somewhere to park our parent, so we're not tuning in to the positives to start with.

What's frustrating is that we know they don't have to be. I personally have come across three facilities, all offering continuing care, that I'd be happy to move into tomorrow except they wouldn't have me. Two, admittedly, were high-ish end (although they also ran charitable funding schemes for less wealthy members of their respective communities); but one of them, rooted in the Methodist movement, was far from expensive and exceptionally well-led.

And again, if you look at dementia village schemes and tv documentaries like "Old People's Home for 4 Year Olds," there is astonishingly good work being done in older people's care, and really progressive research into promoting quality of life throughout older age.

I hear you on the fun and games aspect, but that too is not universal. The very first question the assessor asked my mother at what would have been my facility of choice for her was "would you say you are a people-person?" To which she answered a firm "no, I wouldn't" - possibly the most honest answer she ever gave to any question in this context.

So, there aren't really any excuses for it. We know it can be done and it doesn't have to cost the earth. It takes imagination, leadership and genuine empathy.

Apart from the recommended three, have you looked around yourself at what's available in your area?