Group-Based Interventions for Coping with Brain Injury for Families: A Manual and Workbook for Practitioners and Family Caregivers

This combined manual and workbook allows clinicians to develop and run an ’Understanding Brain Injury’ group-based intervention for the families of patients who have suffered moderate to severe brain injury. This is a specific group-based course useful for family groups with patients who are in hospital or early discharge. Taking an approach based on psycho-education and cognitive behaviour therapy, the manual guides the facilitator through each session, outlining what should be focused on, giving suggestions for talking points, and enabling the group to become a lively, interactive unit in which the members share their own experiences and gain insight and caregiving coping strategies from each other.

The manual is accompanied by a full workbook, available as an appendix and also in downloadable format in an accompanying eResource. After working through the programme, the families of the individual with the brain injury will have a better understanding of the consequences of their family member’s condition, and be helped to devise personalised solutions for these difficulties. The workbook also includes an overview of the brain and explains how damage to different areas can have physical, cognitive, behavioural, emotional, and lifestyle consequences.

This manual and workbook will be invaluable to a range of health and social care professionals and trainees working with those with brain injury in group settings.

Dr Rebekah Jamieson-Craig is a Senior Clinical Psychologist specialising in neuropsychology, with fifteen years of experience in working with adults who have acquired brain injuries, in both in-patient post-acute settings and slow-stream rehabilitation units. She has developed and run the ’Understanding Brain Injury’ group extensively over this period of time.