A recent article in the Monitor on Psychology highlighted an issue we deal with on a daily basis here at the Center for Neurobehavioral Health. The article was on cognitive retraining, that is, working with people who sustained injury to the brain to assist them in recovering as much function as they can. The article summarized hundreds of research studies in this area, and concluded that having clients maximize the cognitive abilities they already have is preferable than undergoing the frustrating task of teaching cognitive skills that were most affected by the injury.

For example, a client of ours worked as a bookkeeper, and suffered global brain damage that most affected her ability with numbers. Rather than painstakingly try and retrain her as a bookkeeper, she was much more successful working on a crisis hotline, in which she could employ her still intact verbal skills.

One of the best approaches in working with any clinical population is to see what the client can do with their strongest areas. Consider Haftmann's "alternative" view of Attention Deficit Disorder in which he views ADD as highly adaptive in a rapidly mobile and changing environment. Consider the work of Temple Grandin on the savant characteristics of some with autism. Consider Kay Jamison's work on creativity and bipolar disorder.

This does not mean that we ignore the deficit areas. Some deficit areas, such as verbally abusive behavior, must be addressed. What it means is that in the course of therapy, we must never lose sight of the individual strengths inherent in all of us, whether we "fit in" or not.