Summary: Executive Function Therapy: For victims of stroke or head injuries -- tumors or brain disorders -- what happens when standard rehabilitation techniques like physical therapy or occupational therapy come to an end? Are these victims then truly prepared to re-enter the work force? Sarah Ward (a cognitive rehab specialist in Boston) says most aren't. She calls it the "silent epidemic" - where persons with damage to their frontal lobes (the brain's "CEO") may look as though they've "recovered" in the eyes of their physicians after a ten-minute check up - but most still have great difficulty functioning day to day. Damage to the frontal lobes can leave someone who is truly smart without the ability to plan, organize time and space, initiate projects or see them through to completion. The control center orchestrates an array of "executive functions." Sarah Ward is now one of a small community of therapists around the country who are working to better re-integrate such patients into the workforce. She works on teaching compensatory strategies - like how to execute a task from start to finish, independently problem solve, or re-learn small tasks like small talk - how to listen or to write. Ward was trained as a speech pathologist and learned about this issue when her own husband was hit by a truck more than a decade ago. His struggle became her personal and professional passion. In this piece we would come to understand this little-known field with Sarah Ward -- and hear the stories of a collection of her patients.
