Jake's case challenges existing models of rehabilitation predominantly focused on physical capacity building. Study findings point to the need for rehabilitation to invest more resources in efforts to address the existential and social elements of long-term social reintegration. Implications for Rehabilitation Both the veteran with SCI and their meaningful support network face challenges socially reintegrating after injury and rehabilitation. Empowering clients to envision future possibilities in terms of family, intimate relationships, and meaningful work are important to successful long-term social reintegration. Addressing the existential desires and social capacities of the individual may be as important as addressing physical functioning skills after SCI.
In this article, I look at the role that context of injury plays in the rehabilitation of military patients who sustained a limb amputation as a result of blast injury trauma in Afghanistan and Iraq. This article contrasts the technologically driven model of rehabilitation produced by the US Armed Forces Amputee Patient Care Program at Walter Reed Army Medical Center with a person centered approach building on work in medical anthropology. In this article, two case studies are contrasted illustrating the reasons behind the rejection of an upper extremity prosthetic device in one example and the acceptance of one in another. I argue that even in light of the incredible advances in medical technique and prosthetic technology, a body and functionality focussed rehabilitation must also pay attention to the subjective experiences of individual patients in terms of their present and their past.
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