What is rehabilitation?

Rehabilitation is care that can help you get back, keep, or improve abilities that you need for daily life. These abilities may be physical, mental, and/or cognitive (thinking and learning). You may have lost them because of a disease or injury, or as a side effect from a medical treatment. Rehabilitation can improve your daily life and functioning.

Who needs rehabilitation?

 

Rehabilitation is for people who have lost abilities that they need for daily life. Some of the most common causes include:

• Injuries and trauma, including burns, fractures (broken bones), traumatic brain injury, and spinal cord injuries

• Stroke

• Severe infections

• Major surgery

• Side effects from medical treatments, such as from cancer treatments Certain birth defects and genetic disorders

• Developmental disabilities

• Chronic pain, including back and neck pain

 

What are the goals of rehabilitation?

The overall goal of rehabilitation is to help you get your abilities back and regain independence. But the specific goals are different for each person. They depend on what caused the problem, whether the cause is ongoing or temporary, which abilities you lost, and how severe the problem is. For example:

• A person who has had a stroke may need rehabilitation to be able to dress or bathe without help

• An active person who has had a heart attack may go through cardiac rehabilitation to try to return to exercising

• Achieving as full a physical and psychological recovery as possible

• Improving quality of life through gaining life management skills, a sense of direction for the future and resilience

• Rebuilding social connectedness to family and community

• Finding a new valued role within the community

• Learning to understand and self-manage physical and mental health conditions to the best of the person's ability

• Assisting the person to return to safe and meaningful work at the earliest possible time to minimise further harm to physical and mental health and wellbeing through long term absence from employment

• Reducing the human and economic cost of disability for ADF members, former members, their families and the broader community