Research on healthcare disparities has found that racial and ethnic minority population were less likely to receive intensive and effective rehabilitation following an acquired brain injury compared to their White counterparts. Immigrant status and language barriers further perpetuate the disparities in access to rehabilitation care. In addition to institutional barriers such as absence of culturally and linguistically appropriate health materials as well as lack of cultural competency training for staff, patient factors such as dissonance in cultural value orientation to health care has been identified as a common culturally-mediated barrier accounting for lower healthcare utilization rate among immigrants. Cultural factors including health beliefs and values impact patient’s self-appraisal of illness and have been studied as significant predictors for treatment adherence. The present case study seeks to demonstrate the role of socio-cultural factors in shaping the course of a Chinese immigrant patient’s neuropsychological evaluation and cognitive rehabilitation following an aneurysm rupture and subarachnoid hemorrhage.

The patient is a 64-year-old, monolingual Mandarin-speaking female who was born and raised in mainland China, referred for neuropsychological evaluation for treatment planning following an anterior communicating artery aneurysm rupture and subarachnoid hemorrhage. Cognitive complaints included selective retrograde amnesia and difficulty with short-term episodic memory. Patient completed neuropsychological assessment, then underwent a course of time-limited cognitive remediation.

Neuropsychological assessment was administered in Mandarin Chinese, and the majority of the tests utilized available norms from Mandarin-speaking Chinese population. While the patient continued to demonstrate at or above average functioning in aspects of executive function, she exhibited a pattern of “rapid forgetting” on modality-nonspecific learning and memory in addition to reductions in attention, working memory, psychomotor speed and visuo-perceptual integration. In the absence of mood symptoms, the patient demonstrated emotional resilience and strong family support system. Given reportedly minimal benefits from prior SLP intervention, barriers to treatment were examined and considered: linguistic factor, difficulty in holding on to information due to anterograde amnesia, and the lack of family involvement in the treatment process. In the context of Chinese family system and immigration history, family-centered care is imperative for the patient’s rehabilitation process. Main treatment goals included improving awareness of cognitive deficits as well as reinforcing consistent use of external strategies to compensate for impaired orientation and memory. Flexibility in the use of evidenced-based interventions were emphasized. The patient’s family were counselled in a culturally competent manner to further understand the aspects that matter the most for the patient and incorporate multi-sensory learning to facilitate intervention.

In this case study, we utilized culturally and linguistically appropriate norms and critically examined barriers to treatment from a contextual lens. This case highlights the role of culturally competent neuropsychological evaluation and incorporating a strength-based and multi-method approach in informing treatment planning for cognitive rehabilitation with immigrant population. Given the dearth in the existing cross-cultural literature, there is a clear need to conduct high-quality research in under-studied and under-represented immigrant populations to reduce the gap in service delivery and enhance treatment effectiveness.