Vocational rehabilitation in multiple sclerosis (MS): a profile of clients seeking services.

Although a number of innovative vocational rehabilitation (VR) demonstration projects have been completed with MS populations, there remains a lack of clarity as to a profile of these VR participants. An effort is made in this article to carefully describe the demographic and occupational characteristics of people with MS seeking vocational services at intake, as well as their self-perceived psychosocial functioning across a range of pertinent measures. The issue of "program dropouts" in VR services for people with MS is also addressed. Implications for better understanding participants with MS within the VR process and improved nuances in service delivery are then discussed.

The difficult-to-employ in epilepsy rehabilitation: predictions of response to an intensive intervention.

In this prospective study, 46 adult seizure outpatients with suspected brain impairment were referred for vocational services at the University of Washington Regional Epilepsy Center and counseled for job placement. Among the demographic, intellectual, neuropsychological, and psychosocial variables considered, the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale (WAIS) Digit Symbol subtest and the name-writing procedure from the neuropsychological battery by Dodrill (1978) were the best discriminators of later employability. Using discriminant function analysis, these two tests correctly classified 75.0% of the group which ultimately became employed (n = 22) and 73.9% of the group which did not attain employment (n = 26). Implications of these findings are discussed in relation to rehabilitation planning.