EPA-0552 – Social rehabilitation and employment of people with intellectual disabilities

Background Experience in the field of professional and social activation and employment of people with moderate and severe intellectual disabilities indicates the need to seek specific strategies for solving problems on the way into the labor market of people recruited from this social group. The analysis of the limitations and difficulties in recruiting these people, and based on samples taken before employing them on the open market, gave birth to the concept of developing an innovative system to support candidates for employment. Methods The development of the Project’Our work - preventing discrimination against disabled people in access to work, preceded by a very detailed analysis of t…

EPA-0424 – Impact of cognitive traning with cognitrain system on cognitive plasticity in schizophrenic patients

Background In the literature we can find an increasing number of examples of successful cognitive rehabilitation of patients suffering from schizophrenia. The aim of this study was to investigate the effectiveness and impact of the CogniTrain therapeutic method on cognitive neuroplasticity in patients suffering from paranoid schizophrenia. We expected an answer to the question, whether brain is sensitive to stress and if the efficiency of cognitive rehabilitation improves as a result of using CogniTrain computer training. Subjects and methods Two groups of test subjects were recruited of patients with paranoid schizophrenia. In the first and second groups the measurements of short-term memo…

Cognitive improvement in schizophrenia after 6-month treatment with olanzapine

The use of the Free Recall Method in the Analysis of Verbal Memory Deficits in Dual Diagnosis Patients

In schizophrenia there are specific cognitive deficits including verbal memory deficits. The objective of this study was to examine short-term verbal memory differences between subjects with and without a dual diagnosis.A group of 80 patients with a diagnose of schizophrenia were examined. 40 of them never used illicit drugs, the other 40 also received a diagnose of addiction to psychoactive substances. The Free Recall Method was used to compare two examined groups. The results of addicted and not addicted schizophrenic patients were analyzed in all trials of the 5 stages of the examination with the use of Free Recall Method. Persons suffering from schizophrenia can usually repeat much fewe…

Impact of pharmacological and psychological treatment methods of depressive and anxiety disorders on cognitive functioning

Anxiety and depressive disorders are characterized by a number of clinical symptoms like decreased mood, apathy, anhedonia and anxiety. An important element of the clinical picture is also neurocognitive impairment. The most common treatment methods for depression and anxiety are pharmacology, psychotherapy or a combination of both methods. The data from literature show that those treatment methods lead to an improvement of clinical symptoms, but they exert a possible impact on cognitive functions. However the study results referring both to the role of pharmacological treatment and psychotherapy in this domain are still inconsistent. There is an increasing number of accessible data confirm…