Housing accessibility problems for people with Parkinson's disease

Abstract

The results suggest that actions targeting balance problems and dependence on walking devices have the greatest potential for reducing housing accessibility problems for people with PD. The study also details environmental barriers that need specific attention when providing housing adaptation services.

Exploring Bedroom Usability and Accessibility in Parkinson’s Disease (PD): The Utility of a PD Home Safety Questionnaire and Implications for Adaptations

“…As a result, we have adopted the concept of P-E fit as proposed by the HE developers, but incorporated specific items of PD symptoms, and simplified the contents so it can be used by a PD MDT during their regular home visits to identify potential areas for home adaptations. Although preliminary, our results acknowledge the significant contribution of balance impairment as one of the main functional limitations, consistent with what has recently been shown with the HE ( 8 ), and highlights the bedroom and adjacent bathroom areas of major environmental barriers, supporting previous reports that these areas are common locations for home injuries among PD patients ( 1 ).…”

“…The HE questionnaire, developed for assessment of housing accessibility, is a comprehensive scale based on the notion of P-E fit, taking into account that functional limitations constitute an important component of accessibility problems ( 26 ). The HE has recently been studied in over 250 PD patients across all Hoehn and Yahr stages, identifying the significant contribution of balance problems and dependence of walking devices in reducing home accessibility ( 8 ). Although the HE has been shown to be a valid and reliable instrument for assessment of housing accessibility, it is a comprehensive instrument requiring special training to administer, and even though it is comprehensive in terms of including all body parts that involve in mobility, the personal items of the HE is not specific for PD symptoms, lacking the contribution of NMS.…”

“…Despite the limited evidence, PD patients were found to have more P-E fit problems than controls, requiring significantly more adaptations in the area of personal care (including bedroom) than control subjects, becoming less independent with more functional limitations ( 4 , 7 ). In the most recent study, balance problems and inappropriate use of walking devices were identified as major contributors to housing accessibility problems that seem to worsen as the disease advances ( 8 ).…”

People with Parkinson's disease and housing issues: A scoping review

“…Shih et al 34 had one section focusing on whether PD treatments were related to the risk of nursing home admission. In addition to a study protocol 24 including one psychometric study28 the aims of the empirical studies from Sweden 23,[25][26][27]29 concerned different aspects of housing, framed in the context of environmental gerontology, and related to general as well as PD-specific aspects of health. The methodological study from Thailand 31 included the development and piloting of a home assessment questionnaire, while the study from the United Kingdom 33 aimed to investigate in-home sensors for data collection about fall risks.…”

Untitled

“…In order to further the understanding of housing and health dynamics in later life, it is necessary to capture a range of housing aspects-objective as well as perceived [2,3]. A common approach when studying housing has been to address the physical environment in terms of environmental barriers, accessibility and housing adaptations [4,5]. Less commonly addressed are perceived aspects of housing [6], even though existing research shows that such aspects are related to independence in daily activities and well-being among older people [2,7].…”