Repeatable Battery for the Assessment of Neuropsychological Status

“Your illness does not define you. Your strength and courage do.”

According to the World Health Organization, one out of four people is most likely to be affected by a neurological or mental disorder at some stage in their lives. Hundreds of millions of people are suffering from such diseases, which is why neuropsychological and mental health deterioration is a prime concern of the medical industry in today’s time. Amongst these hundreds of millions of patients, many millions are Americans. This health crisis has been around for a while and still prevailing in the society.

There are various types of mental disorders in the world, and the psychological care industry has worked vigorously to mitigate mental disorders from the face of the earth. There have been numerous developments and advancements in regards to developing better and improved treatments which can treat such illness effectively. Simultaneously, advancements in equipment, tools and assessment tests have been made to perform evaluation swiftly to produce accurate results, which can aid in the administration of treatments efficiently. In the pursuit of catering a large spectrum of mental illnesses, psychometric tests have been curated to provide comprehensive results and cater to a large sum of the population. One of these significant and popular neuropsychological tests is the Repeatable Battery for the Assessment of Neuropsychological Status.

Repeatable Battery for the Assessment of Neuropsychological Status (RBANS), initially designed and curated in 1998, is a psychometric test. This neuropsychological test provides a small, separately administered battery to generate and evaluate cognitive enhancement or deterioration. RBANS was originally designed to carry out assessments mainly targeting the illness of dementia. However, soon proved to be beneficial for assessment of various other mental health diseases such as Alzheimer’s disease, HIV Dementia, Vascular Dementia, Huntington’s disease, Schizophrenia, Parkinson’s disease, Depression and closed head injury. It is also known to be of useful in the screening of neurocognitive status in young patients.

Benefits of Repeatable Battery for the Assessment of Neuropsychological Status (RBANS)

The key benefit which is vital for its popularity is that RBANS covers five distinct aspects of mental capability and skills. They are as follows:

• Immediate Memory – Measures story memory and list learning
• Constructional or Visuospatial – Evaluates the ability to figure line and copy orientation
• Delayed Memory – Evaluate the ability to recognize list, recall list, figure recall, and story memory.
• Language – Measures the skills of semantic fluency and naming pictures
• Attention – Calculates coding and digital span

Furthermore, RBANS work to screen deficits in adolescents in acute-care environments. It aids to monitor recovery status during the rehabilitation process. It also helps to recognize cognitive and efficacy adverse effects in clinical applications. Another advantage of RBANS is that it can be used independently as a single battery to find and define dementia in old patients.

Hence, RBANS is of immense significance for making assessments of recovery and developments in patients over some time.