Dementia

Medical data suggests that in the UK more than 850,000 individuals are living with dementia and 1 in 6 individuals over the age of 80 is affected by this health condition. As people´s life expectancy rises, the estimated number of people living with dementia will increase to over 1 million by the year 2025 (NHS 2022).

A study supported by University of Kent came to the conclusion that VR helped patients recall old memories by providing new stimuli difficult to achieve, due to ill health or inaccessibility within a secure environment.

These memories not only provided positive mental stimulation for the patients but helped caregivers discover more about their lives thus improving the quality of care provided and social interaction.

A similar VR activity was conducted in one of the leading care home providers in Wimbledon by our own team member Manuel Francis (RGN) where a resident with Alzheimer's Dementia was provided a travel experience in the Swiss Alps, Manuel had no prior knowledge of the fact that the resident had visited the Alps as a child. The resident verbalised, " I have visited this village as a child with my sister and parents when I was 14 and my parents couldn't pay for a skiing experience back then" Manuel called the next of kin of this resident who confirmed that this was a true occurrence as she has mentioned it to the next of kin in the past.

It was a truly ground breaking discovery to find out that stimulus from even virtual environments could trigger memories from the past for someone who had a poor episodic and short term working memory.