Cognitive Remediation Therapy Benefits and Outcomes

One of the biggest signs of true cognitive therapy success is the ability to enjoy one’s life to its fullest. Planning social events, making travel plans, and remembering information about loved ones, such as when a spouse’s birthday is, is essential for participating in life activities. These skills all rely on domains of executive function, which are damaged when a person experiences a brain injury, a psychotic episode, or has a neurodegenerative disease.

Patients can practice  executive function skills with exercises such as Basketball in New York, Hurray for Change!, and the Towers of Hanoi.

These digital activities can help patients develop strategies for how they would plan a weekend away or a dinner with friends.

Participating in conversation as a speaker or listener, remembering faces, and being able to keep track of people in a casual social setting or the workplace rely on multiple cognitive resources. These can be especially difficult for a patient with Alzheimer’s or a traumatic brain injury. Impulsiveness, loss of language, and decreased memory can strain existing relationships and cause a patient to feel too anxious to form new ones. Practicing skills like listening and remembering faces at home can help patients navigate real-world situations where they will have to be able to listen and follow multiple speakers and remember identities and thoughts of others.

Using Bird Songs, I Remember You!, and The Squeaking Mouse are a sample of the many exercises that touch upon the necessary domains of cognition we all rely on to maintain our social lives.

Professional development provides self-esteem and independence. Patients can practice skills they will need in the workplace or in an academic setting that can lead to optimal success. This is critical in patients with psychiatric conditions like schizophrenia or patients with stroke, as cognitive function changes when a patient experiences psychosis or brain damage.

Skills such as computation, attention to detail, and organization can be practiced using The Right Count!, Ancient Writing, and Secret Files.

By practicing these skills at home, patients can feel more confident when entering a vocational training program or volunteering to gain further real-world experience that build upon the strategies they have practiced in a digital setting.

Navigating a store, understanding what household items are needed, and being able to take control of managing finances are key to independent living. With many conditions, these skills are lost but can be regained with therapy and patience. Clinicians can have patients practice navigating and exploring an unfamiliar space, identify objects that may not be neatly organized in a store, and scan an aisle of products and identify what they want at home.

Activities such as Find Your Way!, Entangled Figures, and Shapes and Colors can train patients to examine visual information that is needed when shopping for essentials, such as groceries.

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