Objective: To describe a contemporary artistic educational program based on photographic cyanotype techniques and to present the results of the program carried out with older people with early dementia. We determined whether these people could participate in the program, their viewpoint about it, and what this program could contribute to their experience.Method: 21 people diagnosed with mild or moderate dementia participated in a series of artistic education workshops. While conducting the workshops, participant observation was carried out, and the participants' engagement was assessed. Upon completing the series, five focus groups were carried out with the participants with dementia, and another focus group with their professional caretakers.Results: we observed the participants' high level of commitment to the activity and their interest in learning new things. We also observed the participants' satisfaction during the creative process and with their results. The artistic activities not only reinforced the feelings of capacity of the participants with early dementia but also transmitted a positive image of them.Conclusions: Dementia was not an obstacle to participate in the program, which was an opportunity for creativity, learning, enjoyment, and communication of people with dementia. In the authors' opinion, facilitating access to art and artistic education to people with early dementia can contribute to enforcing their rights and to improving the care system. Keywords: early dementia; creativity; artistic education; art; psychosocial intervention 4 Contributions of an Artistic Educational Program for Older People with Early Dementia: An Exploratory Qualitative StudyArticle 27 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights acknowledges that every person has the right to take part freely in the cultural life of the community and to enjoy the arts. However, in practice, dementia can imply a considerable reduction of the opportunities to make effective use of this right because it has been shown to be a factor that is negatively related to people's participation in cultural and artistic activities.(Paillard-Borg, Wang, Winblad, & Fratiglioni, 2009). And this occurs despite the fact that diverse studies have revealed a positive relation between participation in this kind of activities and health and well-being throughout the ageing processes (Cohen, 2009;Cohen et al., 2006;Fisher & Specht, 1999;Wikström, 2002).Limiting the cultural opportunities of people with early dementia is unjustified, because this pathology does not imply any obstacle to art-related behaviors. Besides the therapeutic settings of art therapy or occupational therapy, there are few investigations about art-related activities in people with dementia who have no artistic trajectory prior to their disease. However, the few documented experiences agree that dementia itself is not an obstacle for cultural artistic consumption such as visits to art galleries or museums (MacPherson, Bird, Anderson, Davis, & Blair, 2009;Ziesel, 2009). Likewise,...
Abstract:Purpose: To determine and compare the preferences and priorities of youths and adults about the best ways to improve hospitals that would have an impact on the quality of life of hospitalized adolescents.Method: Participants in this study were 364 adolescents between 14 and 17 years of age (96 hospitalized) and 148 adults (96 parents of patients and 52 health professionals). All the participants completed a questionnaire about their preferences and priorities with regard to hospitalization.Results: A high degree of agreement among the youths and the adults was observed, especially in the importance assigned to agreeableness of clinical staff to improve adolescents' experience of hospitalization. Some discrepancies were also observed. The youths granted more importance to issues related to filling in time, specifically to the leisure technology available for patients. The adults assigned more importance to the organization of the hospital stay, in particular, for adolescents to be admitted with patients of the same age and for them to receive academic support in the hospital.Conclusions: Adolescents express a coherent perspective about the aspects that may help them to feel better in the hospital, in some ways different from the perspective of the adults who care for them.
Adolescents express a hospital user perspective that should be taken into account in developing improvements in the health care they receive.
The design of hospitals should consider the needs and preferences of the patients, but the preferences of adolescents have received little attention. This investigation analyzed adolescents' preferences for diverse hospital designs and compared them to those of the adults in charge of their care. Participants were 345 adolescents -88 of them hospitalized-76 parents, and 46 health professionals. They all assessed three pairs of photographs of different hospital settings. Quantitative analyses were performed of the choices, and qualitative analyses of their justifications. The results indicated high agreement among the groups about which atmosphere was preferable for children and for adults, and also-with nuances-about the suitability of the nonchild-like atmosphere for adolescents. No important differences were found between hospitalized and nonhospitalized adolescents' responses. The qualitative analyses revealed significant differences between the adolescents' and the adults' response models in their ratings of the hospital setting design. The adolescents' perspective seemed more sensitive than that of the adults towards symbolic aspects and the needs, experiences, and emotions of hospital users. Our work reveals the need to consider adolescents' perspective of hospital design, which cannot be substituted by that of their parents or of the clinical staff.
Cerebral Palsy (CP) is one of the most severe disabilities in childhood, and it demands important costs in health, education, and social services. CP is caused by damage to or abnormalities inside the developing brain that disrupt the brain's ability to control movement and maintain posture. Furthermore, CP is often associated with sensory deficits, cognition impairments, communication and motor disabilities, behavior issues, seizure disorder, pain, and secondary musculoskeletal problems. According to the literature, motor modules are peripheral measurements related to automatic motor control. There is a lack of evidence of change in motor modules in children with CP when different treatment approaches have been evaluated. Thus, new strategies are needed to improve motor control in this population.Robotic-based therapies are emerging as an effective intervention for gait rehabilitation in motor disorders such as stroke, spinal cord injury, and CP. There is vast clinical evidence that neural plasticity is the central core of motor recovery and development, and on-going studies suggest that robot-mediated intensive therapy could be beneficial for improved functional recovery. However, current robotic strategies are focused on the peripheral neural system (PNS) facilitating the performance of repetitive movements (a bottom-up approach). Since CP affects primarily brain structures, both the PNS and the central nervous system (CNS) should to be integrated in a physical and cognitive rehabilitation therapy (a top-down approach). This paper discusses perspectives of the top-down approach based on a novel robot-assisted rehabilitative system. Accordingly, the CPWalker robotic platform was developed to support novel therapies for CP rehabilitation. This robotic platform (Smart Walker + exoskeleton) is controlled by a multimodal interface enabling the interaction of CP infants with robot-based therapies. The aim of these therapies is to improve the physical skills of infants with CP using a top-down approach, in which motor related brain activity is used to drive robotic physical rehabilitation therapies. Our hypothesis is that the CPWalker concept will promote motor learning and this improvement will lead to significant improvements in automatic motor control.
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