Neuropsychologists have lengthy evidence-based training to understand what happens to the human brain after injury. They look at how this relates to changes in the survivor’s personality, cognitive functioning, and mental health. This then shapes the work they do, usually in collaboration with a team of rehabilitation professionals, to help the person with a brain injury move on positively with their life.
Although not exclusively so, Neuropsychologists in private practice most often find themselves working with clients who have sustained a traumatic brain injury. This means that the brain injury has been caused suddenly and unexpectedly, often as a result of a car accident, a workplace accident, a fall, or other traumatic event. Most of these clients are living in the community, striving to come to terms with impact of their injuries in every aspect of their lives.
Areas of expertise include:
- Understanding brain injury and its effects
- Advice about treatment and rehabilitation
- Formal neuropsychological assessment and cognitive testing
- Compensating for memory problems, reduced speed of thinking, and poor concentration
- Coping with executive difficulties, e.g. making decisions, solving problems organisation and planning
- Help with loss and grief, and adjustment to changes in sense of identity
- Dealing with anger, anxiety and low mood
- The place of acceptance, and the development of resilience and hope
- Exploring changes in intimate relationships, including psychological and emotional adjustment
- Understanding the need for good quality of sleep, with a focus on improving sleep hygiene
- Reconnecting with or developing new social networks
- Finding meaning and purpose in activity; voluntary and/or vocational
- Everyday coping with the demands of an ongoing legal case and intensive rehabilitation
- Achieving goals and planning for the future
- Psychoeducation about the effects of brain injury and therapeutic support for the family
- Training, and working with those providing support, to understand and implement a rehabilitation approach
- Integrated working with multidisciplinary teams to achieve joint goals and best outcomes
- Initial assessment reports, and regular update reports, to include summaries of work undertaken and making recommendations for further intervention if required
- Consultation for colleagues and other professionals