Intrinsic motivation

The prevailing wisdom in neurological rehabilitation, and particularly for stroke, is that physical therapies are the key to improvements in function. Despite accepting the importance of ‘the motivated patient’, the lack of simple, proven ways to improve intrinsic motivation has hindered efforts to combine physical therapies with motivation. Now there is available a simple, free, well-validated approach to encourage intrinsic motivation (‘Take Charge’). The benefits for people who had a stroke are well-established but this could be applied to people with a range of neurological and other disorders. We provide the evidential support for this approach and suggest ways of incorporating it into daily practice.