The Effect of Occupation‐based Cognitive Rehabilitation for Traumatic Brain Injury: A Meta‐analysis of Randomized Controlled Trials

Traumatic brain injury (TBI) is the leading cause of death and disability among people younger than 35 years in the United States. Cognitive difficulty is a common consequence of TBI. To address cognitive deficits of patients with TBI, various cognitive rehabilitation approaches have been used for the clinical setting. The purpose of this study was to investigate the overall effect of occupation‐based cognitive rehabilitation on patients' improvement in cognitive performance components, activity of daily living (ADL) performance, and values, beliefs and spirituality functions of patients with TBI. The papers used in this study were retrieved from the Cochrane Database, EBSCO (CINAHL), PsycINFO, PubMed and Web of Science published between 1997 and 2014. The keywords for searching were cognitive, rehabilitation, occupation, memory, attention, problem‐solving, executive function, ADL, values, beliefs, spirituality, randomized controlled trials and TBI. For the meta‐analysis, we examined 60 effect sizes from nine studies that are related to the occupation‐based cognitive rehabilitation on persons with TBI. In persons with TBI, overall mental functions, ADL, and values, beliefs and spirituality were significantly improved in the groups that received occupation‐based cognitive rehabilitation compared with comparison groups (mean d = 0.19, p < .05). Evidence from the present meta‐analytic study suggests that occupation‐based cognitive rehabilitation would be beneficial for individuals with TBI for improving daily functioning and positively be able to affect their psychosocial functions. Collecting many outcome measures in studies with relatively few participants and the final data are less reliable than the whole instrument itself. Future research should evaluate the effectiveness of specific occupation‐based cognitive rehabilitations programmes in order to improve consistency among rehabilitation providers. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.