Neurobehavioural rehabilitation

Abstract

Helping brain-injured people re-adapt to society requires a system that provides individuals with opportunities to learn and apply social and functional skills in community settings. However, many types of acquired brain injury cause damage to prefrontal structures that are central to behavioural self-regulation, giving rise to complex patterns of socially challenging behaviour that can deny access to rehabilitation. Neurobehavioural rehabilitation was initially developed to address long-term problems of challenging behaviour that prevented individuals from engaging meaningfully with the rehabilitation process. However, it has evolved to promote psychosocial recovery more broadly, with the aim of changing behaviour from disabled, inappropriate, and socially handicapped to adaptive, purposeful, and ‘independent’. It is a paradigm that incorporates methods of associational learning within a structured environment that emphasizes clear feedback to raise awareness of behaviour, in a way that improves social cognition and self-regulation, to promote community independence.