Course Description: Patients
with cognitive impairment often have difficulty with functional activities
as well as learning or relearning behaviors in the clinic. Many clients
are functioning below their potential, because of fear or other psychological
barriers. In addition, depressed, unmotivated, apathetic and/or anxious
clients often do not benefit from treatment as much as others. As you
know, these patients often pose difficult challenges for therapists.
In this exciting and unique course we will learn and discuss how to increase the efficacy of our treatment with patients who have cognitive impairment, depression, or difficult personality disorders. Therapists will learn how to individualize their treatment interventions for difficult populations in this intermediate course. Therapists will also get practical ideas, tools, and strategies they will be able to immediately put into practice.
If you treat patients with the following conditions then this course is for you:
- Alzheimer’s Disease
- Parkinsons’s Disease
- Brain injury from stroke or trauma
- No awareness of their impairments
- Depression
- Apathy
- Extreme lack of motivation
- Multiple Sclerosis
- Older adults with memory problems
- Patients that fall or are fearful of falling
Course Objectives
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Participants will be ready to implement effective strategies that enhance functional independence in clients with cognitive impairment. They will be able to identify strategies to remove common barriers to learning.
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Participants will be able identify psychological barriers to learning (e.g., subtypes of depression, anxiety, personality disorders, and maladaptive thinking patterns).
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Participants will be able to employ effective strategies to overcome psychological barriers to learning.
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Participants will be able to modify treatment techniques in order to allow cognitively impaired patients to learn new skills.
Course Outline:
| 7:30 - 7:55 | Registration |
| 7:55 - 8:00 | General conference information |
| 8:00 - 9:30 | New discoveries in memory, aging, and neuroplasticity can improve treatment efficacy |
| 9:30 - 9:40 | Break |
| 9:40-10:45 | How can you help cognitively impaired patients learn and remember better? |
| 10:45-12:00 | Using psychology in the clinic: Maximizing learning and treatment outcomes in your unmotivated, depressed, apathetic, fearful and/or anxious patients |
| 12:00 - 1:00 | Lunch -- on your own |
| 1:00 - 1:45 | Using psychology in the clinic: Maximizing functional independence and carryover. Functioning better in a variety of settings, and with different caregivers. Motivating depressed, apathetic, and/or anxious patients |
| 1:45 - 2:50 | Prehabilitation: Taking advantage of the use it or lose it principle to maintain or enhance memory ability in older adults |
| 2:50-3:00 | Break |
| 3:00 - 3:45 | 25 ways to improve your patients’ (and your) memory ability |