Intensive therapy is an option for physiotherapy, occupational therapy, and speech therapy that concentrates treatment with longer and more frequent sessions over one to three weeks. It’s not suitable for everyone or every issue, but for those whose conditions meet the criteria, it can be the most beneficial treatment model.
Intensive physiotherapy can be used to more quickly alleviate high levels of pain or to restore pre-injury functioning over a shorter period of time. While care needs to be taken to ensure that treatment is aiding in recovery and not exacerbating the issue, a range of treatment modalities can be used to avoid strain on the body. For example, a three hour session might consist of ultrasound, strengthening exercises, electrotherapy, and manual therapy. The following day, treatment can focus on different muscles and stretching rather than strengthening. By doing more each day to alleviate pain, mobilize and restore function, goals can be reached over two to three weeks rather than three or more months.
Following the acute recovery phase from stroke, concussion, or traumatic brain injury, occupational therapy helps us, and our brains, to adapt. Those adaptations, including “rewiring” the brain, result from repetition. The sooner you get those reps in, the sooner you can get back to living life!
Intensive occupational therapy allows you to focus on your goals every day, prevents you from picking up convenient but maladaptive habits, and reduces your risk of further injury from things like falls. That concentrated effort helps the brains build those new neural pathways more quickly, and adaptive devices and behaviours become routine more easily.
Difficulties communicating with others can be particularly frustrating. Intensive speech therapy is a great option for children with speech difficulties and for adults who are restoring skills. Concentrated effort, five days a week, hastens progress, keeps us motivated, and rewards us with more frequent accomplishments.
A speech therapist can also teach you different ways to communicate, something you may want to learn as soon as possible!
“Boot camps” have become more popular over the past several years, as a way to get the hard stuff over with so you can enjoy the benefits. Whether it’s learning a new skill like computer programming or toning up for beach season, intensive training has its advantages.
If you think intensive therapy might be a good choice for you or someone you care about, give us a call to get started with an assessment.
Please contact us with any questions you may have about our services.
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