This book examines the effects of brain injury and stroke on a person's life, and demonstrates how the skills and talents of people with brain injury and stroke can be fostered.
Roger Rees's focus is on how a person's skills and talents might be nurtured, irrespective of his or her disability. The factors that best contribute to a person's rehabilitation and learning, including careful planning, errorless learning, and the generation of convoys of social support, are identified. Adjustment of attention, memory and language skills, with case examples drawn from clinic, classroom, and the scientific literature, is advocated. Strategies for coping with post-trauma personality change and emotional difficulties are demonstrated. Transition back to school and work is linked to principles of errorless learning and the generation of support networks. The role of the arts, post-trauma, is emphasised, as is the importance of sustained communication and activities with known and trusted mentors. A neuroscientific view of rehabilitation is presented. In each chapter, the relationship between a person's participation and learning and his or her basic nervous system is illustrated, with the neurological foundations of recommended activities outlined. But the neuroscientific approach to the subject is overlayed with the author's advocacy of the supreme worth of each individual. Many case studies, based on the author's clinical work, running a community-based rehabilitation program in Adelaide, demonstrate how a person participates, learns, and adjusts, and how skills and talents can be nurtured by well-chosen interventions.
The book is written for rehabilitation program practitioners, and families and activity groups, who facilitate the learning and wellbeing of people with physical and psychological difficulties following brain injury or stroke. Tertiary-level students of rehabilitation will find it invaluable. The book can also be used for models of recovery from behaviours as diverse as attention and memory difficulties, social skills acquisition, language and personality disorders, planning and problem-solving difficulties, and return to employment. |
