Neuropsychological rehabilitation training in residential mental health services

Abstract

The neuropsychological rehabilitation in our mental health service is a central pillar of psychosocial rehabilitation. These interventions are integrated into a more complex program of psychosocial rehabilitation based on cognitive behavioral method.

We devote particular attention to the empowerment of the cognitive functions: attention, memory, language, logical and abstract reasoning.

The aim of this research is to evaluate efficacy of neuropsycological rehabilitation training in cognitive rehabilitation of psychotic patients.

The subjects that took part to the training were psychotics patient, residents in a mental health Community. Patients were both females and males, aged between 18 and 55 years. They were divided in two experimental groups and a control group. The instrument used was a battery of neuropsycological standardized tests. Tests were managed by an eye-tracker specialist.

Preliminary results seem to confirm a certain degree of improvement due to the training. Eye tracking integration during assessment appears to be a powerful tool as well, in order to define more patient-tailored strategies.

The training based on the empowerment of cognitive functions (attention, memory, language, logical and abstract reasoning) seems to change significantly the cognitive functions of the psychotic patients.

Disclosure of interest

The authors have not supplied their declaration of competing interest.