Who am I now? A scoping review on identity changes in post-stroke aphasia.

This is a scoping review, not a test of treatment effects, and the authors did not assess the quality of the included reports. The evidence base was small and mixed: 20 reports, including 5 theoretical papers and 3 book chapters, with 12 empirical papers of varied designs. Personal narratives written by people with aphasia were excluded, so the findings are filtered through researchers' interpretations. Most participants were in chronic aphasia, from Western countries, and 31 women and 64 men were included; little is known about older adults, nursing home residents, early onset, non-Western backgrounds or socioeconomic status. Many participants had access to therapy or aphasia groups, so people without therapy may be missing. Data collection relied mainly on verbal methods, which may miss nonverbal identity changes in people with communication impairment.

This work was supported by the Dutch Research Council (NWO) grant 023.079.074.

Do not conclude that identity-focused narrative therapy improves mood, quality of life or identity. This scoping review mapped concepts and reports from studies without assessing study quality or testing treatment effects.