HIPO
Playful rehabilitation - Collaborating with local physiotherapist, senior care home staff and residents to re-imagine senior rehabilitation.
HIPO is designed for seniors experiencing depression following physical trauma. It is also aims to engage and support their care-giving family. The focus is to promote creative interactions, that move past memory loss, cognitive degeneration or challenged mobility using their remaining skills.
Design Opportunity
Using playful rehabilitation as a source of meaningful social engagement and empowerment for seniors after physical trauma.
Design Challenge
Following physical trauma, such as a fall, many seniors in Canada lose mobility. Most families opt to hire a health care worker to help care for the senior or admit them to a senior care facility or assisted living.
There is an assumption that the professionals will be better equipped to deal with the new problems in the senior’s life,
physical, emotional, practical needs. Usually because of the lack of man-power seniors do not get sufficient rehabilitation time to regain their mobility skills and confidence. Instead, they learn to accept their new life in a chair. As a burden in their family’s life. Loss of mobility in elders is often followed by depression, suicidal thoughts, loss of appetite. The normal North American family is not equipped to deal with this. Even accepting depression as a normal part of growing old! This acceptance is reflected in the senior’s disbelief of healing or continuing to lead a meaningful life, which leads to rapid deterioration of cognition and further damage to their relationship.
Background
One of the most prominent challenges of current society is to develop a better understanding of the aging process. As a result of the demographic evolution in which elderly people occupy a gradually increasing cohort of the general population, it is of high socioeconomic importance to promote functional independence and comfort of living in this group. This requires a profound knowledge of the processes of neural aging.
This project intends to connect with seniors who are experiencing depression following physical trauma, and to create tools to be used to improve their lives and all of those who care for them. The focus is to create objects that promote interaction; a creative, in the moment engagement, that looks past an individual’s memory loss, cognitive degeneration and develops connections with their remaining skills. The aim is to provide a model for these seniors, for their loved ones who may struggle to find ways to be in their company, and additionally to professional caregivers. A model that gives rise to the opportunity for all to express themselves and to promote these relationships, that assume their ability to grow and respond in ways that move through fear. by educating families of seniors on how to rehabilitate seniors after physical trauma step by step.
POSITION 1
Active Muscle Groups: Tibialis anterior muscles, Ankle extensor muscles
POSITION 2
Active Muscle Groups: Quadriceps muscles, Calf muscles
POSITION 3
Active Muscle Groups: Abdominal muscles Hamstring muscles
