Sunday March 10, 10:00 - 11:00

Rehabilitation of memory for everyday life

The main goal of rehabilitation is to enable people disabled by injury or disease to return to their own, most appropriate environment. Memory rehabilitation should also follow this principle and focus on real life problems rather than experimental material. Although people with memory impairments and their families should not be led to believe that significant improvement in memory can occur once the period of natural recovery is over, they can, nevertheless, be helped to manage, cope with or bypass problems arising from such impairment. When planning for a memory therapy programme, results from a neuropsychological assessment should be combined with more direct assessment of everyday problems obtained by observation, interviewing and self report measures. Neuropsychological assessment will identify cognitive strengths and weaknesses while direct assessment will highlight everyday problems requiring treatment. Some general guidelines exist to improve learning and retention in people with memory problems but, in addition to these guidelines, we need to identify specific goals appropriate for individual patients and families. Achieving these goals may require environmental adaptations, teaching the use of external memory aids, helping people to use strategies to enhance learning and dealing with the emotional and psychosocial consequences of memory impairment. In addition to individual therapy, group treatments have certain advantages. They are useful in reducing anxiety and depression, in increasing social contacts, and in practising the use of aids and strategies. The teaching of generalisation from one setting to another or from one problem to another should be an integral part of a memory rehabilitation programme. This talk presents data to support these views and concludes with a case example of a successful memory programme for a man who sustained a severe head injury.