On the 20th of June 2025, Josephine Tan will defend her PhD thesis titled ‘Social participation in dementia through artistic photos’, in the Aula of the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam at 13:45h.
In this study, Josephine and colleagues developed a digital version of an artistic, person-centered photo-activity using black and white artistic photos, curated by a visual artist. They wanted to examine the effects of the digital photo-activity in a randomised controlled trial in the nursing home, compared to a general conversation activity (control). They looked into residents’ with dementia’s mood, social interaction, and quality of life, formal carers’ empathy and person-centered attitude, and informal carers’ sense of competence. Additionally they looked at the barriers and facilitators of implementing the digital photo-activity versus the control activity, in the nursing home.
Josephine and colleagues were able to develop the first version of the Fotoscope web-app, which can be used by carers to select and view digital, artistic photos that reflect the personal interests of the resident with dementia. Residents with dementia who did the Photo-Activity with their carers felt more positive about the conversation they had, compared to the residents in the control activity. Residents who did the Photo-Activity were also observed to have better mood during their social interaction, and better positive affect in terms of quality of life. For the formal carers, those who did the Photo-activity reported getting to know the resident better, and also agreed that the Photo-activity using the Fotoscope app can be adapted into daily care practice.
Art based activities have long been known to benefit people with dementia residing in nursing homes. However, it often needs significant amount of time to plan for, if say it was a museum visit, or an arts and crafts session in the nursing home. The digital Photo-activity, through the Fotoscope app, offers easy access to a database of artistic, photos, specially curated by a visual artist. It was found to be easy to use by the carers, and pleasing enough to view by the residents with dementia. With this simple, but pleasurable digital art-viewing activity, we hope that it brings more opportunities for connection and relationship building for persons with dementia in the nursing home, and their carers.
On the 20th of June 2025, Josephine Tan will defend her PhD thesistitled ‘Social participation in dementia through artistic photos’, in the Aula of the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam at 13:45h. Josephine’s thesis is supervised by R.M. Dröes, R. Gobbens and co-supervised by T.P. Ettema and S. Sikkes. More information on this dissertation can be found on the website of VU Amsterdam.
Josephine Tan (department of Psychiatry Amsterdam UMC) is passionate about Health Psychology. In her masters she studied the acceptability and feasibility of healthcare robots in rural healthcare in New Zealand. Seeing how technology could benefit vulnerable populations. As a clinician, she is often guided by Acceptance and Commitment Therapy or ACT, where she helps her patients with long-term health problems to live a full life despite the disease that they have. Josephine Tan: “My previous experiences and interests seemed to have naturally led me to work with this research. People living in nursing homes also face problems related to their disease. They often experience social isolation or boredom in the nursing home for example. Their formal and informal carers are sometimes unsure of how to interact with them. So we wanted to introduce an activity, that could help facilitate meaningful social interaction for people with dementia living in nursing homes and their carers, through art and technology. We wanted to introduce an activity in the nursing home, that would help people with dementia feel known as a person, and not just by their disease, and this resonated with me a lot.”
