Offering Out-World Experiences to Dementia In-patients through Virtual Reality. (Preprint)

Abstract

Research suggested that institutionalization can increase the behavioural and psychological symptoms of dementia. To date, recent studies have reported a growing number of successful deployments of VR for PwD to alleviate BPSD and improve their HRQoL. However, VR has yet to be rigorously evaluated since the findings are still in their infancy, with non-statistically significant and inconclusive results.

Unlike prior works and overcoming a limitation of the current literature, the system was co-designed with people with dementia and experts in dementia care and was evaluated with a larger population ranging from mild to severe cases of dementia.

Working with 44 dementia patients and 51 medical experts, we co-designed a Virtual Reality system to enhance the symptom management of dementia patients residing in long-term care. We evaluated the system with 16 medical experts and 20 people with dementia.

This paper explains the screening process and analysis we run to identify which environments patients would like to receive as an intervention. We also present the system’s evaluation results by discussing in depth their impact. According to our findings, Virtual Reality contributes significantly to an improved quality of life for people with dementia, as it can be very effective in the reduction of behavioural and psychological symptoms of dementia, especially for aggressive, agitated, anxious, apathetic, depressive, and fearful behaviours.

Ultimately, we hope that the results from this study will offer insight into how Virtual Reality technology can be designed, deployed, and used in dementia care.

Name and URL of the Registry: Cyprus National Bioethics Committee - http://www.bioethics.gov.cy/moh/cnbc/cnbc.nsf/index_en/index_en?OpenDocument Number of Approval: ΕΕΒΚ/ΕP/2022/56