[Strategy and methods of cognitive rehabilitation in patients with Alzheimer's disease or other dementia].

Abstract

Individual cognitive rehabilitation of patients with Alzheimer's disease or other dementia is based on two principles: the understanding of the cognitive symptomatology (that is of the preserved and altered capacities) and the therapeutic contract, that sets the patient in the patient's center of the therapy. Therapy should be individualised, using facilitation techniques of learning or relearning and external assistance, to improve the quality of life and autonomy of the patients in the early stages of the disease. With the progression of dementia, the therapist, who has a cognitive and human knowledge of the patient, may continue to help the patient even if the objectives are not cognitive anymore.