Effect of Cognitive-emotional Rehabilitation on Cognitive Function and Memory of Patients With Traumatic Brain Injury

Today, traumatic brain injury and defects in cognitive functions and memory are the most frequent problems after brain injury. This study aims to examine the effectiveness of emotional and cognitive rehabilitation on cognitive performance and memory in patients with traumatized brain injury.

This study is an applied study in terms of purpose and experimental in terms of collecting information method. Considering purposive sampling and random selection of samples, we used the randomized block experiment with a pre-test-post-test design with a control group. We used the emotional cognitive rehabilitation protocol based on Gross model (2002) and Nejati cognitive rehabilitation to train emotional and cognitive rehabilitation (2017). The study's statistical population included all brain-injured patients with cognitive defects and memory problems referred to Neurology Clinic, Shahid Motahari Hospital, and Razmehr Psychiatric Clinic, Shiraz City, Iran, from June 22, 2019, to January 20, 2020. This study consisted of 3 groups (2 experimental and 1 control group) at three levels (mild, moderate, and severe patients). The study participants were 45 patients selected after a brief mental examination with a mini-mental state examination test. 

 Cognitive rehabilitation significantly (P<0.001) increased the brain-injured patients' cognitive performance. Also, emotional and cognitive rehabilitation significantly (P<0.001) affected the brain-injured patients' cognitive performance. Finally, cognitive rehabilitation significantly (P<0.001) increased the brain-injured patients' memory performance.

 It seems that through delivering necessary training and education regarding effective interpersonal skills, computer drills, practices at home, and so on, emotional and cognitive rehabilitation helps the brain injured people to properly manage emotions, effectively establish interpersonal communication, and lighten the load of negative emotions, and consequently memory gets improved will less stress. In fact, emotional and cognitive rehabilitation is a complete collection of training for regulating emotions and enhancing and growing memory. Thus, emotional and cognitive rehabilitation's significant effect on memory enhancement is logical and acceptable. In conclusion, this protocol effectively improves brain-injured people's cognitive performance.