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REVIEW article

Front. Psychiatry
Sec. Aging Psychiatry
Volume 15 - 2024 | doi: 10.3389/fpsyt.2024.1436273
This article is part of the Research Topic Ethical Conflicts Regarding the Care of Older Adults with Dementia View all 3 articles

Ethical implications in using robots among older adults living with dementia

Provisionally accepted
  • University of Rovira i Virgili, Tarragona, Spain

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

    The aging of the world’s population due to accelerating demographic shift on all continents is causing increasing pressure worldwide, giving rise to a “crisis of care” or “care wave.” The increase in longevity is resulting in an increase in chronic diseases (such as dementia), an increase in care needs to perform the activities of daily living, and situations of isolation and profound loneliness among older adults. These circumstances are opening the debate on the need to use technology, such as robots, to improve the wellbeing of older adults and their caregivers. The aim of this paper is to address the ethical questions in using social and companion robots for people with dementia, such as concerning consent, the replacement of human care, the potential for increased dependency, and the burden on caregivers. Involving older adults and other stakeholders offers the potential to pursue robotics to support older people while also ensuring a strong ethical commitment. The study is a review of high-impact articles on the topic of the use of social and companion robots with older people with dementia.

    Keywords: robots 1, Older Adults2, dementia3, Ethics4, formal caregivers5, informal caregivers6, co-creation7, welfare technology8 X

    Received: 21 May 2024; Accepted: 26 Aug 2024.

    Copyright: © 2024 Deusdad. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

    * Correspondence: Blanca Deusdad, University of Rovira i Virgili, Tarragona, Spain

    Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.