Iranian Rehabilitation Journal
Year:2016 | Volume:14 | Issue:4|Papers Count:7

IRJ covers a wide range of topics in the fields of social welfare and rehabilitation sciences. Schizophrenia (SCZ) is one of the relevant topics, which associates with enormous psychological and economic burden on the affected families. This multifactorial and debilitating disorder is largely influenced by genetic factors. Although several genes and risk factors have been reported for SCZ, the role of those genes is speculated to be minor in the pathogenesis or the course of the illness. Imbalanced higher brain functions such as cognition are the predominant component of SCZ. Since the higher order brain functions are essentially human-specific, it may be hypothesized that human-specific genetic factors are of prime importance in the causation of SCZ.

Objectives: The parent-child relationship is one of the strongest predictors of a child’s adjustment during adulthood. Many hearing-impaired children have normal hearing families, and this issue adversely affects the parent-child relationship; however, studies on interventions have focused on high-risk clinical specimens.Methods: The effect of the Faranak parent-child program (Persian version of Parent-Child Mother Goose Program) on the quality of mother-child relationship has been evaluated in this study, which involved families having preschool, hearing-impaired children. A group of 14 mothers with hearing-impaired children participated in this 12-week program. The control group received no training. Both groups were asked to complete the Gerrard parent-child questionnaire before and after the intervention program to assess their relationship with their children before and after the program.Results: The mothers who were part of the experiment group reported many positive changes in their relationship with the child during the program.Discussion: The Frank Parent-Child Mother Goose Program could help families with hearing-impaired children in this 12-week community-based program, wherein parents learned skills that affect the relationship between mother and child.

Objectives: This paper aims to explore whether the Persian-speaking patients of different stages, ranging from mild to moderate, have a deficit in semantic processing by comparing the performance of Alzheimer’s patients with that of the healthy individuals.Methods: The subjects of both the groups of Alzheimer’s patients and healthy control were matched for age, the state of monolingual or bilingual, and socio-cultural status. In order to assess the semantic processing ability of the subjects, Pekkala’s 2004 model was adopted.According to the model, the subjects were required to produce (say) the name of as many as category members of animals as possible within the time limit of 60 seconds.Results: The findings showed that while healthy subjects had an intact semantic processing ability, the AD patients showed weak performance in the five measures of semantic fluency including the number of true linguistic units, the total quantity of words, word size in clusters, the mean cluster size, and the cluster switching.Discussion: Conclusion: Following the framework of Troyer (1998b), it has been concluded that AD patients suffer from the semantic processing.

Objectives: Integration of religion and spirituality in the workplace help people to be more satisfied with their job. The aim of the present study was to explore the role of religious beliefs, faith at work, and spirituality in the prediction of job satisfaction among rehabilitation experts.Methods: With the help of simple random sampling, 163 subjects (74 speech and language pathologists, and 89 occupational therapists) were selected from rehabilitation experts employed across educational clinics affiliated to the Tehran University of Medical Sciences.The Islamic religiosity scale, faith at work scale, spirituality and spiritual care rating scale, and Dunnett’s job satisfaction questionnaire were used to collect the data. Multiple regression and Pearson correlation were applied for data analysis.Results: The findings showed that religious beliefs and faith at work can significantly influence job satisfaction among rehabilitation experts (P<0.05). However, spirituality did not have the same effect (P>0.05).Discussion: These findings showed that religious beliefs are superior to spirituality as far as predictions about job satisfaction were concerned among Iranian rehabilitation experts.

Objectives: Any form of disability is considered a critical factor having significant effects on a family. Stress is the main result of such effects on parents. According to the classical procedure, the mothers play a major role as child caregiver, so they experience more stress than other members of the family. The goal of this study was to develop and assess the role of the de-stress training program in decreasing the stress of mothers of mentally disabled children.Methods: This study was a semi-experimental research with follow-up. The study sample included 20 mothers of children with mental disabled who live in Tehran. The parental stress scale was used for measuring mother’s stress. Data was analyzed by univariate analysis of covariance.Results: The data presented a significant difference between the control and experiment groups. Also, the results did not show a significant difference between pre-test and follow-up, indicating a persistent effect of the training.Discussion: De-stress training program was found to significantly decrease the stress of mothers of mentally disabled children.

Objectives: The purpose of this study is to examine the use of assistive technology, social support in everyday life and psychological existential orientation for individuals with physical disabilities.Methods: Forty-six elderly persons with physical disabilities (aged 73.7±10.6 years, range 53-93 years) were examined with regard to the use of assistive technology, social support in everyday life and psychological existential orientation by an extensive questionnaire set (questionnaire for assistive technology (AT-24), questionnaire for social support (F-SOZU-K-22) and Brief Symptom Inventory (BSI).Results: The subjects stated that they needed aid and social support in order to carry out their daily indoor/outdoor activities (for e.g. dressing, having a bath / shower, using toilet, eating, going up / down the stairs, shopping, or going out). The most commonly used mobility aid was the walking frame that accounted for 61.9%, followed by the walking stick with 40.5% and a bathtub lift with 21.4%. The results also showed the psychopathological symptoms in the sample.Discussion: Assistive technologies together with the support of relatives and care services help people to cope with a variety of activities in their daily lives with fewer restrictions. The effectiveness of the aids differs between participants because it depends on several factors such as health, knowledge, and information about aids, as well as the appropriate selection of aids.

Objectives: The basal ganglia (BG) controls different patterns of behavior by receiving inputs from sensory-motor and pre-motor cortex and projecting it to pre-frontal, pre-motor and supplementary motor areas. As the exact role of BG in swallowing process has not been fully determined, we aimed at reviewing the published data on neurological control in the swallowing technique to have a better understanding of BG’s role in this performance.Methods: English-language articles, which were published before December 2015 and eligible for the present research, were extracted from databases according to the inclusion criteria, i.e.articles related to “neurological aspects of swallowing” and/or “lesions of sub-cortical or BG relevant to swallowing disorders”.Results: This systematic review indicates that BG is a complicated neurological structure with indistinct functions and that swallowing is a sophisticated process with several unknown aspects.Discussion: Swallowing is a multifaceted performance that needs contribution of the tongue, larynx, pharynx, and esophagus as well as the neurological structures such as neocortex and subcortical regions - BG and brainstem.