Day Center experience in rehabilitation of craniocerebral injured patients.

The Day Center for head-injured patients specialises in treating patients at later stages following brain trauma. The goal of therapy is social reintegration as measured by the quality of family and social life and by actual occupational status. At this later stage, a year or more since injury, the cognitive and behavioral aspects of brain damage determine the outcome of rehabilitation. The therapy aims at preserving as well as improving patients' overall performance including family life and therefore their families are treated as well. As the patients are not hospitalised at this stage, the asset of this model is that it constitutes an arresting factor in preventing regressive attitudes acquired during hospitalisation which is a sheltered framework. The Day Center System encourages the patients to cope "in vivo" with reality, while the therapy given strives at providing them with the instruments needed for coping in actual life situations. We present here our experience in 38 patients admitted consecutively during the course of a year. The results show that the therapeutic milieu was of great help in preserving as well as improvement patients' performance; furthermore, it is evident that some improvement was achieved even after several years post trauma.