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,...

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This work contains a narrative review of the effects of different types of play in the well-being of hospitalized children. For this purpose, the literature highlighting the evidence that supports the use of different types of play to improve children's hospitalization experience was analyzed. These types of play are medical games, playing with dolls, puppets, or marionettes, playing with pets, and digital or video-games. All of them can improve children's experience of hospitalization. Despite everything, children can play a lot of things in the hospital, and recreational resources make important contributions to hospitalized children's well-being. Play is children's right, also in the hospital, and is a particularly important resource to improve the care that pediatric patients receive in health institutions.

Purpose: The purpose of this work was to review scientific publications related to the use of visual arts in pediatric hospitals. Background: Visual arts, particularly painting, have historically played an important role in the design and atmosphere of healthcare spaces, especially hospitals. Methods: From 2000 to 2019, 79 publications located in relevant databases and manual searches were identified and analyzed. Results: Sixty of these publications include empirical studies and 19 theoretical models, comments, or reflections on the use of art in children’s hospitals. Their analysis allows us to differentiate four groups of works: (a) “environmental” includes works whose purpose is to know how visual artistic interventions in the hospital can affect the people who see them, mainly pediatric patients, families, and health workers; (b) “participatory” includes studies aimed at knowing the effect of developing visual arts activities in the hospital; (c) “exploratory” includes works whose purpose was to know more about the children’s perspective using their artistic expressions; and (d) “diagnostic” includes those that use children’s drawings as a tool to diagnose diverse processes related to the pediatric patients’ experience. Conclusions: Taken together, the works we analyzed in our study support the use of visual arts in hospitals as a resource to enhance the well-being of children and families and their experience in the hospital. We indicate two particularly relevant aspects in this sense: the importance of the visual arts in improving the symbolic quality of hospitalization settings and the communication processes that occur in these environments.

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.