Cognitive Rehabilitation

What is Cognitive Rehabilitation Therapy?

Cognitive rehabilitation therapy is one form of therapy available for patients with traumatic brain injury, who as a result of their injury suffer from cognitive deficits such as memory loss or attention problems.

Cognitive Rehabilitation entails an individualized program of specific skills training and practice plus metacognitive strategies:

  • Metacognitive strategies include helping the patient increase self-awareness regarding problem-solving skills by learning how to monitor the effectiveness of these skills and self-correct when necessary.

“Until recently, there was an unfortunate bias that Alzheimer’s disease patients could not learn,” says Dr. David Loewenstein[1] director of research and neuropsychology at the Wien Center for Alzheimer’s Disease and Memory Disorders and professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at the Miller School of Medicine at the University of Miami.

In an article published in the American Journal of Geriatric Psychiatry in 2004, he and his colleagues described results of a trial showing that systematic cognitive rehabilitation can help people with mild Alzheimer’s disease carry out specific tasks.

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Cognitive Rehabilitation for people with dementia State of the Art

The relevance of cognitive rehabilitation for people with dementia is becoming increasingly accepted by researchers and practitioners in the field. }}

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Some well-known facts about Cognitive Rehabilitation for dementia

  1. Difficult to achieve generalisation/ skill transfer with dementia patients (Pedretti, 2001)
  2. Cognitive Rehabilitation (CR) may be more successful in the home environment/community ( Clare, 2003)
  3. CR should be considered for patients who have diagnosis of early stage dementia (Clare, 2003)
  4. Utilizes community Occupational Therapy resources

References:

  • [1] Cognitive Rehabilitation For People With Alzheimer's and Dementia
  • Clare, L. Cognitive rehabilitation and people with dementia [2]