Health and Healing after Traumatic Brain Injury: Understanding the Power of Family, Friends, Community, and Other Support Systems (Disability Insights and Issues)

In this groundbreaking book, experts show what a difference support systems―family, friends, community and social programs―can make towards the recovery of the millions of people who suffer a traumatic brain injury each year.

Health and Healing after Traumatic Brain Injury: Understanding the Power of Family, Friends, Community, and Other Support Systems stresses the importance of an integrated and systems approach to healing. This book offers a unique combination of practitioner perspectives on what works for individual patients, consumer stories and learned insights over time, as well as researcher insights from innovative programs. It provides a holistic account of the important factors in living with a brain injury that will inform and benefit health practitioners and policy makers as well as people with brain injuries and their family members and friends.

The chapters explore the current best evidence and contemporary views on healing that draw on optimism, aspirational living, and meaningful partnerships. The authors focus on the emergent area of the salutogenic experience of injury―how brain injury changes and shapes lives in positive ways―and on the variables within individuals and their environments that provide a supportive influence in long-term healing.

Heidi Muenchberger, PhD, is associate professor of environmental psychology at Griffith Health Institute, Queensland, Australia.

Elizabeth Kendall, PhD, is professor of community health and rehabilitation at Griffith University, Queensland, Australia.

John Wright is a rural scientist who has lived with a brain injury for over 40 years and is a strong advocate for disability and wellbeing in the community.