Cognitive Therapy Basics

Thousands of soldiers are returning from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan with moderate to severe physical injuries. Such injuries include head tram, loss of limbs, and debilitating injuries to such areas as the arms and legs. Medical providers are utilizing a number of treatments to help these brave men and woman return to civilian life.
Service dogs are helping to counteract the effects of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) by providing dogs to help calm and relax a soldier suffering from PTSD. The dogs sense a soldier’s anxiety helps calm the soldier through the use of touch. The dogs are a loving distraction from stress. The dogs have two years of special training to help people with cognitive disorders and physical disabilities.
The Walter Reed Army Medical Center (WRAMC) is the central point of helping soldiers recovering from traumatic injury. The Walter Reed Health Care System (WRHCS) consists of ten facilities in three states. Physical therapy services include rehabilitation treatments in areas as neurorehab, orthopedics, and amputees. The service is divided into five major sections: inpatient, orthopedic inpatient, outpatient, amputee, and aquatic therapy.
For physical injuries medical providers deliver various methods of treatment such as ultrasound, heat, ice and massage therapy, as well as a carefully designed exercise program. They also employ such treatment techniques as bands, medicine balls, stretches and exercise bikes to help e purpose is to strengthening and condition weak, sore, and injured muscles and joints. Often physical therapy has been more productive than surgery.
The physical therapist will also perform different tests to diagnose the patient’s condition. After completing the assessment, a treatment plan is discussed and therapy begins. Pain management is a key component of physical therapy.
Other physical therapy treatments include postural training and ergonomic training. Also called Human engineering, the applied science of ergonomics is focused on designing and arranging objects that patients use regularly so that patients and objects can interact adeptly and safely. For instance, work arrangements to accommodate the patient could consist of providing a more comfortable chair, sitting closer to a work desk, lowering the computer keyboard, arranging items to be at easy reach. This is often done for soldiers with back pain. Techniques and modifications are implemented to fit the patient’s specific medical condition.
Exercises are an essential part of physical therapy treatment. This can include swimming, using a treadmill, stretching techniques, breathing techniques, lifting weights. These exercises are not only for clinic use, but also for home exercise. As well, therapeutic techniques are designed to help soldiers learn how to function with artificial limbs.
The trauma of war can be emotionally debilitating. For returning injured soldiers, physical therapy includes mental health therapy. This can include providing coping strategies on how to deal with a loss of a limb, overcoming the feeling of helplessness, overcoming the feeling of isolation and depression, and showing the soldier that life can still be productive and meaningful.
Soldiers deserve the best medical treatment for their service. Because there are so many soldiers returning from war seriously injured, it is important that heath care providers are there to help them return to civilian life.

Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI) can cause about a lot of speech and language disorders that would entail the need of speech therapy. That’s why the role of speech therapy in the rehabilitation process of a traumatic brain injury patient is very vital.
TBI Speech And Language Problems
A person may have loss of consciousness after a traumatic brain injury. This loss of consciousness can vary from seconds, minutes, hours, days, months or even years. The longer you are out of consciousness, the more severe your injury is. After a traumatic brain injury, you may suffer secondary consequences, which are considered to be more lethal and dangerous than the primary injury.
Some of these secondary consequences include damage to your brain’s meninges, traumatic hematoma, increased intracranial pressure, herniation, hyperventilation, ischemic brain damage, and cerebral vasospasm. When these brain damages occur, they tend to affect parts of your brain that are responsible for speech and language processing and production, thus you get speech and language problems.
Traumatic brain injuries can cause you permanent or temporary memory loss, orientation problems, lesser cognitive performance or slower processing of thought, attention problems, deterioration of skills in basic counting, spelling and writing. You can also have Aphasia, where you have a loss of words.
Traumatic brain injury can also cause you difficulty in reading simple and complex information. Your naming skills, of everyday seen objects, familiar others can also be affected. It can also bring about dysarthria, or problems with movement, that can cause you to have shaky movements leading to difficulty speaking and writing.
Speech Therapy For Traumatic Brain Injury Patients
Treatment for traumatic brain injury patients can be classified into three categories. There are different treatments for early, middle and late stages of a traumatic brain injury. There are also compensatory strategies taught for a TBI patient.
Early Stage Treatment
Treatment during the early stage of a traumatic brain injury would focus more on medical stabilization. A speech therapist would also deal more on establishing a reliable means of communication between the patient and the therapist. The patient is also taught how to indicate yes or no, when asked.
Another goal is for the patient to be able to make simple requests through gestures, nods, and eye blinks. The behavioral and mental condition of the patient is also treated. During the early stage, sensorimotor stimulation is also done. Where in the therapist would heighten and stimulate the patient’s sense of sight, smell, hearing and touch.
Middle Stage Treatment
The main goal during the middle stage treatment is for the patient to develop an increased control of the environment and independence. The adequacy of patient’s interaction to the environment is also increased. The therapist should also stimulate the patient to have organized and purposeful thinking. The uses of environmental prompts are to be diminished during this phase.
A lot of activities focusing on cognitive skills like perception, attention, memory, abstract thinking, organization and planning, and judgment, are also given.
Late Stage Treatment
During the late stage of treatment, the speech therapists goal is for the patient to be able to develop complete independence and functionality. Environment control is eliminated and the patient is taught compensatory strategies to cope with problems that have become permanent.
Some of these compensatory strategies are the use of visual imagery, writing down main ideas, rehearsal of spoken/written material, and asking for clarifications or repetitions when in the state of confusion.