Cognitive Rehabilitation

While in OT graduate school, I did not appreciate the impact cognitive rehabilitation had on people with brain injury. It seemed as if the focus was on physical disabilities, with a much smaller focus and introduction to the specialized niche of cognitive rehab. As such, I spent less time thinking about cognition and more of my medical-model-mind focused on kinesiology, range of motion, strengthening, stretching, physical agent modalities, and protocols.

My year in cognitive rehabilitation has taught me that my OT approach has been too two-dimensional and less holistic than I thought, that cog rehab is a transdisciplinary form of rehabilitation that has introduced me to thinking outside the box and to reducing self-limiting discipline specific walls that curtail rather than progress client treatment programs.

I highly recommend the book Cognitive Rehabilitation by Sohlberg and Mateer as a comprehensive introduction to this extraordinary specialty.