Abstract

FLORES, Maura Jazmín Ramírez. Neuropsychological rehabilitation of self-awareness after brain injury: a review. Neuropsicologia Latinoamericana [online]. 2010, vol.2, n.2, pp. 27-40. ISSN 2075-9479.

The self-awareness capacity can be altered as a consequence of brain damage caused by neurodegenerative diseases, neurological disorders, and traumatic brain injury, among others. Impaired self-awareness can cause anosognosia, over-estimation of cognitive performance, behavioral distress, difficulty in activities related to self-care, and a very important social impairment in keeping and starting relationships. These problems also cause that the therapeutic and rehabilitation process may be more difficult due to the lack of adherence to the intervention. Neuropsychological rehabilitation has adopted in its intervention programs the need to approach these self-awareness problems, mainly in patients with acquired brain damage. The present review has the aim of showing the different approaches within the neuropsychological model that are used in the treatment of self-awareness problems, from the holistic approach to the social integration of the patient. Positive and negative effects are discussed on the work done in self-awareness, the therapeutic scopes of the most commonly used programs of intervention, and the difficulty of research in this subject is raised given that the existence of poor replication of results, since most of these studies come from individual and specialized sessions.

Keywords : Rehabilitation; Self-awareness; Neuropsychology; Brain damage; Social intervention.

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