[ExI] VR for dementia care

[spike]

>... On Behalf Of BillK
Subject: [ExI] VR for dementia care

This is a marvellous use for virtual reality!

<http://www.techrepublic.com/article/how-virtual-reality-is-transforming-dementia-care-in-australia/>


Quotes:

How virtual reality is transforming dementia care in Australia...
-----------
BillK

_______________________________________________


Thanks BillK.  As you know, this is a topic which has been on my mind for some time.

In many cases the newest residents at memory care had been living alone for some time beforehand, perhaps several years, and family may live far so they don't visit much.  The friends of the elderly are perishing on schedule and cannot travel easily, so plenty of the aged perhaps are not really in the late stages of dementia so much as they are bored out of their everlovin' minds.  If they don't have or do not use a computer, what do they do?  Watch soap operas?  Daytime game shows?  Well hell, no wonder their minds atrophy.

OK so what if... we discover that we can take mid-stage dementia patients to a memory care facility, give them a really good stimulating virtual existence, a boot camp for the mind analogous to the flabby-ass teenage vido jockey's first weeks in the USMarines?  And we discover, much to our astonishment, that plenty of these patients are not nursing home material?  Their brains are still in there, and they can still learn?

COME ON!  Think about this, think HARD!  What a breakthrough that could be!  We might not need to take the mid-stagers to the nursing home, and while you are thinking about that, get online and find out how much this is going to cost you if you do put grandma in one of those places, oh my, it ain't cheap, oh dear.  We get these VR devices, introduce them to the bored elderly in their own homes, everyone is happier, and far less bankrupt.  For the ladies, what, Elvis Presley interactive reality?  We take video of Elvis and somehow make a talking singing avatar?  For the single men, videos of Dr. Jill Stein over-dubbed in actual sanity or just use that video posted today, unaltered.

We could do a game-like VR, something that would hold the attention, be interactive, provide mental stimulation.  Plenty of what I think we are interpreting as dementia is partly mental atrophy, which can be partially reversed.  So let's figure out how to partially reverse it.

Go Australians!  We are cheering for ya, mates!

spike