(EON-MEM™) Ecologically Oriented Neurorehabilitation of Memory™

BY ANTHONY Y. STRINGER, PHD

The EON-MEM is a systematic, structured, and detailed cognitive rehabilitation program designed to help patients overcome memory impairment. Incorporating the author’s 20 years of experience in cognitive rehabilitation and best empirical practices, the EON-MEM is ideal for adults with mild to moderate memory impairments caused by neurological conditions, including stroke, traumatic brain injury, and brain tumors.

An Easy Way to Improve Memory

Incorporating mnemonic strategies and written aids, the EON-MEM introduces a simple, practical way to improve memory. Using the Write-Organize-Picture-Repeat (WOPR) method, along with an ingenious rhyming technique, EON-MEM helps patients recall information they need to function in their daily lives.    

The program includes a Therapist Guide and a Patient Workbook. The Therapist Guide provides step-by-step instructions, making it easy for both novice and experienced clinicians to use. It walks you through the program, explaining what to say and do with the patient in each session. The EON-MEM system is consistent across patients, quickly mastered by clinicians, and useful for outcome evaluation studies of cognitive rehabilitation.

Built-in Assessment for Individualized Treatment and Progress Monitoring

Each patient receives a Patient Workbook, in which he or she practices skills taught by the therapist. Homework assignments save the therapist time, as substantial progress can be made between sessions. Included in the Patient Workbook is The Memory Strategies and Concerns Questionnaire, a self-report inventory that allows the therapist to collect information on the kinds of everyday memory problems a patient is experiencing, the subjective severity of those problems, and the strategies that the patient currently uses to compensate for his or her impairment. Administered before and after treatment, this questionnaire allows you to demonstrate and monitor the efficacy of the program, create individualized treatment plans, monitor change in the patient’s subjective experience of his or her everyday memory, and increase the patient’s knowledge of memory improvement strategies.    

Implemented in 21 sessions of 1 to 2 hours each, the program allows for considerable flexibility and individualization and actively solicits input from the patient in order to address his or her treatment needs. Session topics include learning numbers and appointments, remembering future tasks and locations of objects, and recalling names, faces, and biographical information. The program can be easily shortened to focus on the areas most critical to the individual. With a strong emphasis on oral and written information, the EON-MEM is useful, practical, and designed to improve necessary skills and everyday functioning.