Multiple Sclerosis
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Multiple sclerosis presents challenges to both patients and professional providers of vocational rehabilitation. That is significant because of the irregular character of its progress throughout the affected person's life and because "the exact etiology of multiple sclerosis (MS) is unknown," with causes being variously attributed to abnormal immune systems, allergic mechanisms, or even a slow-acting virus (MS, 1997). For these reasons, MS has a history of eluding diagnosis (Gordon, Lewis, & Wong, 1994). What is known is that the disease attacks and wastes the neural myelin sheath, which protects the nerve fibers of the spinal cord and brain. The progressive appearance of plaque lesions in the myelin leads to neural dysfunction, which leads to a variety of manifest symptoms, including loss of muscle control. Symptoms can be temporarily controlled or managed with drugs, and the disease may go into remission from time to time. There is, however, no cure for MS. It is a chronic condition. Physical therapy, exercise, and drug therapy are used in various combinations to manage and lessen the impact of disease symptoms. Research continues.Treatment options for MS may be classified into two broad categories: the medical model and the therapeutic or disease-management model. By and large, the medical model presumes treatment with pharmaceuticals, a consequence of research that has yielded a limited roster of drugs that are aimed at arresting and/or reversing demyelination. However,
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as long as possible. Indeed, because MS specifically targets the very systems in the body that are brought to bear on the competent performance of employment duties, vocational rehabilitation becomes a crucial therapeutic intervention aimed at diminishing loss of cognitive and physical function.
The general philosophy of vocational rehab is that the disease is to be managed by the treatment team--including the patient--and that the client-centered rehab intervention is meant to enable the patient not to have his or her identity defined by the disease (Horowitz, 2002). What complicates this ideal is that "too few individuals appear to be referred by physicians for vocational rehabilitation services in the early stages of the disease" (Gordon, Lewis, & Wong, 1994). That is important because all too often vocational rehab does not begin until the disease has progressed so far that the patient has already left employment. Had it begun in the early stage of the disease, the patient could have developed compensating skills and might have been able to stay employed for a longer time.
The precise form that vocational rehabilitation takes varies with the patient; however, it may involve speech therapy, cognitive therapy, occupational th
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Some common words found in the essay are:
Lewis Wong, Indeed MS, Piaget Inhelder, York City, , Disabilities Act, Administration VA, Veterans Administration, Individuals Disabilities, Baker Boggild, multiple sclerosis, vocational rehabilitation, gordon lewis wong, wong 1994, gordon lewis, lewis wong, et al, assistive technology, kraft 1999, physical therapy, lewis wong 1994, ms patients, journal neurology neurosurgery, neurology neurosurgery psychiatry, multiple sclerosis patients,
Approximate Word count = 1915
Approximate Pages = 8 (250 words per page)
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