Playfulness has an important role in ensuring that life continues to be enjoyable and meaningful after a person is diagnosed with dementia. This positive and uplifting book sets out to establish playfulness as an essential component of dementia care, and will be a key text in changing attitudes and offering practical suggestions for new and valuable ways of interacting and being with people with the condition. The author explains what is meant by playfulness within this context, and why it is so important for people with dementia, including as a way of maintaining meaningful relationships and a sense of personhood, as a way of retaining control and as a way into lateral thinking. He provides a wealth of practical suggestions for bringing activities with an element of playfulness into day-to-day dementia care, illustrating these with photographs and many examples drawn from his own extensive experience and from people with dementia, their families and professional caregivers. The importance of spontaneity and of being with the person with dementia in the present moment is emphasized, and the author encourages the reader to develop a more playful mindset, giving them the confidence to engage with different kinds of emotions and follow where playfulness leads, even if a sense of uncertainty is generated. The ethical dimensions of playfulness in dementia care are also covered, including important boundaries to be observed and guidance on dealing with difficult situations. Offering a fresh and original perspective that will illuminate our interactions with people with dementia, this is essential reading for professional care staff, activity coordinators, therapists, nurses, people with dementia and their families and caregivers, and anyone else concerned with the wellbeing of those with the condition.

In an era of increasingly patient-centered healthcare, understanding how health and illness play out in social context is vital. This volume opens a unique window on the role of play in health and wellbeing in widely varied contexts, from the work of Patch Adams as a hospital clown, to an Australian facility for dementia treatment, to a New Zealand preschool after an earthquake, to a housing complex where Irish children play near home. Across these and other featured studies, play is shown to be shaman-like in its transformative dynamics, marshaling symbolic resources to re-align how patients construe and experience illness. Even when illness is not an issue, play promotes wellbeing by its power to reimagine, invigorate, enliven and renew through sensory engagement, physical activity, and symbolism. Play levels social barriers and increases flexible response, facilitating both shared social support and creative reassessment. This book challenges assumptions that play is inefficient and unproductive, with highly relevant evidence that playful processes actually work hard to dislodge unproductive approaches and thereby aid resilience. Solid research evidence in this book charts the course and opens the agenda for taking play seriously, for the sake of health. This book was originally published as a special issue of the International Journal of Play.

Positive shifts in attitudes mean that emphasis is now being placed on the person with dementia and their personal relationships, rather than the illness. There is also growing recognition of the significance of a person's spiritual life in forming an essential basis for their sense of identity, and in providing them with a resource for coping. Offering an inter-disciplinary approach to spirituality and personhood in dementia care, the contributors to this book are leading practitioners and researchers in the field. They provide both a theoretical structure and a practical understanding of the essential role that spirituality can play in the affirmation of personhood and identity, and of ways in which the spiritual well-being of people with dementia can be nurtured. This thought-provoking book includes chapters approaching the subject from Christian and Buddhist perspectives, discussion of inter-faith relations, and of what spirituality might mean for those not part of any faith tradition. This will be valuable reading for nurses, care workers, care commissioners and pastoral support professionals interested in a more holistic and contemplative approach to caring for people with dementia.

The role of play in human and animal development is well established, and its educational and therapeutic value is widely supported in the literature. This innovative book extends the play debate by assembling and examining the many pieces of the play puzzle from the perspective of public health. It tackles the dual aspects of art and science which inform both play theory and public health policy, and advocates for a ‘playful’ pursuit of public health, through the integration of evidence from parallel scientific and creative endeavors. Drawing on international research evidence, the book addresses some of the major public health concerns of the 21st century – obesity, inactivity, loneliness and mental health – advocating for creative solutions to social disparities in health and wellbeing. From attachment at the start of life to detachment at life’s ending, in the home and in the workplace, and across virtual and physical environments, play is presented as vital to the creation of a new ‘culture of health’. This book represents a valuable resource for students, academics, practitioners and policy-makers across a range of fields of interest including play, health, the creative arts and digital and environmental design.

How are individual and social ideas of late-onset dementia shaped and negotiated in film, literature, the arts, and the media? And how can the symbolic forms provided by popular culture be adopted and transformed by those affected in order to express their own perspectives? This international and interdisciplinary volume summarizes central current research trends and opens new theoretical and empirical perspectives on dementia in popular culture. It includes contributions by internationally renowned scholars from the humanities, social and cultural gerontology, age(ing) studies, cultural studies, philosophy, and bioethics. Contributions by Lucy Burke, Marlene Goldman, Annette Leibing and others.

Cognitive impairment, through Alzheimer’s disease or other related forms of dementia, is a serious concern for afflicted individuals and their caregivers. Understanding patients’ mental state and combatting social stigmas are important considerations in caring for cognitively impaired individuals. Psychosocial Studies of the Individual's Changing Perspectives in Alzheimer's Disease describes programs and strategies that professional and family caregivers can implement to engage and improve the quality of life of persons suffering from cognitive impairment. Including real-world cases by international experts and a personal approach to the subject, this book is an important resource for caregivers, researchers, and families living with dementia.

Old age is currently the greatest risk factor for developing dementia. Since older people make up a larger portion of the population than ever before, the resulting increase in the incidence of dementia presents a major challenge for society. Dementia is complex and multifaceted and impacts not only the person with the diagnosis but also those caring for them and society as a whole. Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) design and development are pivotal in enabling people with dementia to live well and be supported in the communities around them. HCI is increasingly addressing the need for inclusivity and accessibility in the design and development of new technologies, interfaces, systems, services, and tools. Using interdisciplinary approaches HCI engages with the complexities and ‘messiness’ of real-world design spaces to provide novel perspectives and new ways of addressing the challenge of dementia and multi-stakeholder needs. HCI and Design in the Context of Dementia brings together the work of international experts, designers and researchers working across disciplines. It provides methodologies, methods and frameworks, approaches to participatory engagement and case studies showing how technology can impact the lives of people living with dementia and those around them. It includes examples of how to conduct dementia research and design in-context in the field of HCI, ethically and effectively and how these issues transcend the design space of dementia to inform HCI design and technology development more broadly. The book is valuable for and aimed at designers, researchers, scholars and caregivers that work with vulnerable groups like people with dementia, and those directly impacted.

Dementia is an urgent global concern, often termed a widespread ‘problem’, ‘tragedy’ or ‘burden’ and a subject best addressed by health and social policy and practice. However, creative writers can offer powerful and imaginative insights into the experience of dementia across cultures and over time. This cross-disciplinary volume explores how engaging with dementia through its myriad literary representations can help to deepen and humanise attitudes to people living with the condition. Offering and interrogating a wide array of perspectives about how dementia might be ‘imagined’, this book allows us to see how different ways of being can inflect one another. By drawing on the ‘lived’ experience of the individual unique person and their loved ones, literature can contribute to a deeper and more compassionate and more liberating attitude to a phenomenon that is both natural and unnatural. Novels, plays and stories reveal a rich panoply of responses ranging from the tragic to the comic, allowing us to understand that people with dementia often offer us models of humour, courage and resilience, and carers can also embody a range of responses from rigidity to compassion. Dementia and Literature problematises the subject of dementia, encouraging us all to question our own hegemonies critically and creatively. Drawing on literary studies, cultural studies, education, clinical psychology, psychiatry, nursing and gerontology, this book is a fascinating contribution to the emerging area of the medical and health humanities. The book will be of interest to those living with dementia and their caregivers as well as to the academic community and policy makers.

Design for Wellbeing charts the development and application of design research to improve the personal and societal wellbeing and happiness of people. It draws together contributions from internationally leading academics and designers to demonstrate the latest thinking and research on the design of products, technologies, environments, services and experiences for wellbeing. Part I starts by conceptualising wellbeing and takes an in-depth look at the rise of the design for wellbeing movement. Part II then goes on to demonstrate design for wellbeing in practice through a broad range of domains from products and environments to services. Among others, we see emerging trends in the design of interiors and urban spaces to support wellbeing, designing to enable and support connectedness and social interaction, and designing for behaviour change to tackle unhealthy eating behaviour in children. Significantly, the body of work on subjective wellbeing, design for happiness, is increasing, and several case studies are provided on this, demonstrating how design can contribute to support the wellbeing of people. Part III provides practical guidance for designing for wellbeing through a range of examples of tools, methods and approaches, which are highly user-centric, participatory, critical and speculative. Finally, the book concludes in Part IV with a look at future challenges for design for wellbeing. This book provides students, researchers and practitioners with a detailed assessment of design for wellbeing, taking a distinctive global approach to design practice and theory in context. Design for Wellbeing concerns designers and organisations but also defines its broader contribution to society, culture and economy.

How can we achieve and promote well-being? Drawing on examples from the arts, humanities and design, this book brings together work from a wide range of areas to reveal the unique ways in which different disciplines approach the universal goal of supporting well-being. Pathways to Well-Being in Design recognises that the distinction between academics and practitioners often becomes blurred, where, when working together, a fusion of thoughts and ideas takes place and provides a powerful platform for dialogue. Providing new insights into the approaches and issues associated with promoting well-being, the book's multi-disciplinary coverage invites readers to consider these ideas within the framework of their own work. The book's 12 chapters are authored by academics who are involved in practice or are working with practitioners and features real world case studies which cover a range of situations, circumstances, environments, and social groups. Pathways to Well-Being in Design responds to those wishing to enquire further about well-being, taking the reader through different circumstances to consider approaches, discussing practice and theory, real world and virtual world considerations. This book is essential reading for anyone seeking to understand well-being, including students and professionals in architecture, landscape architecture, urban planning, design and health sciences.